Ryan Steuer: Welcome to the PBL Simplified podcast for administrators brought to you by Magnify Learning, your customized PBL partner. From over a decade of experience with you in the trenches, we are bringing you this top rated educational podcast designed for visionary school administrators seeking to transform their schools with project-based learning. Launch your vision, live your why, and lead inspired. Here's your host, Ryan Steuer. Welcome to PBL Simplified podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Steuer, CEO of Magnify Learning, and we've got a leadership episode today. So, a leadership episode is where we bring in someone from business, science, education, some field where we think, hey, this could help you lead your school or your district in a different way. And we're going to give you that uh that expertise today. And today, we're going to talk about mind shifting. And I'm super excited about our our guest today. He's got a couple books that you'll be able to get into, some courses, Uh but we just talked about the books are not the purpose. He's got a mission. So uh Mitch, thanks for being on the podcast today. We appreciate it.
Mitch: So Ryan, thank you so much for inviting me and um you know, I see PBL and I've been a big proponent of PBL for like 20 years and actually for uh for the seven or eight years focused on game-based learning which is kind of like an outgrowth of of PBL because I think you know the uh PJ was saying you know the job of kids is to play Right. And so you learn through they they learn best through playing.
Ryan Steuer: Yeah. I love it. Yeah. We've got to get to a lot of our work revolves around this idea that you've got to get engagement first. There's an engagement gap. Kids have to lean in and we think we do that through real real world problem solving. Then you can start to get to the achievement gap and then you can start closing the opportunity gap. Right. So to your point whether it's game based, project based learning, whatever it is, we've got to get kids to lean into learning so that they can start to develop the skills they need. And can you give us uh your second book just came out. Uh it's all around mind shifting, but kind of give our audience uh an overview of what is mind shifting and and what's the mission that you're on?
Mitch: Sure. So, so mind shifting is it's it's kind of a madeup term, right? Because you know, you look it up, there's no word mindshifting, but uh to me mind shifting has three different elements. There's resourcefulness, resilience, and collaboration. So the resourcefulness part is to be able to act access the most resourceful parts of your brain because as people very often we get stuck. You know, we're sure that we're right. We're sure we know how to do something. We're sure we don't know how to do something. We're sure somebody is wrong. And as soon as we're sure of something, we lose access to being resourceful. We get angry. We get frustrated. Um and so to be able to realize when you're stuck and then to be able to quiet those parts of the brain that are yelling at you and then to be able to stay in a resourceful mode where you're able to do critical thinking, be innovative, connect with people, use your executive function. That's resourcefulness. And you know, we can think about kids in school. That's a tremendous asset. Be you know, a if the kids have that themselves and they're self-directed. If if the kids understand the concepts but aren't mature enough to be able to do it themselves, then it still is a lot easier to to uh to co-regulate them because you can you can basically use shortorthhand it's like oh yes I need to take a moment I need to reset so that's the resourcefulness part the resilience is the the ability um to stay focused on what you want to do and to have what you want to do align with what your values are what your goals are what your beliefs are despite the fact that things are going to go wrong and even and that people are going to disagree with us. And so we have a tendency as human beings that when we see a problem or an opportunity, we gravitate to the one right solution. And once we have that one right solution or once we believe we know how to get to the one right solution, by definition, that means everybody else is wrong. And it also means that we're expecting we're going to do that and it's going to to solve everything and neither of those things happen. So uh so in resilience it's how do you go into things when probably the first thing you do is going to fail. If the first thing you do is going to fail, you don't want to regard it as failure. What you want to be able to do is you want to do something with the expectation that what it's going to do is going to give you information back and for you to succeed. And um I'm sorry I just like I'm I'm thinking there's such a good story about this. Um I was at a conference and there was a woman that I know from Finland who was the super well what we would call superintendent of um the district in Finland that had the reputation as the happiest district in Finland at a and Finland is known as the happiest country in the world. So she was des you know people were saying how did what did you do what did you do and she was just describing all these initiatives and what they worked. And then a question came up and said, "Well, you know something, all you're doing is you're talking about the things that succeeded." She says, you know, the question was, "Tell us about the things that failed." And her face went white. I mean, like you and it just it was probably only a couple seconds, but it felt like it was 30 seconds. And then she came back and she says, "Wow." She says, "I'd never thought of it that way because we don't do things to succeed. We do things to try things out and get information. So, we try these things out and everything that we've tried out, we've gotten information back and then we use that information. So, I just don't understand that question, you know, and so that to me that's that's resilience. It's not um what we theor often think of, you know, coming back from failure. It's not even having the concept of failure because once you have the concept of you're going to do something and get information back, you no longer have to say to yourself, "Wow, I'm failing. I'm failing, but I just have to be stronger. I just have to work harder." Right? You resilience is there because you're saying, "I'm going to try this. I think this is going to happen. Oh, it didn't happen, but this is what happened and I and I want to do next." So, so this the second element is building resilience. And then the third element is conflict and collaboration. And it's both, not just collaboration um because no matter what we do, we're going to be doing it with other people. And doing things with other people is what has made the human race the alpha uh alpha animal on our planet. I mean, we build cities, we build technology, uh we build communities, we build families because we're able to work together. Um but uh when we try to do things very often People oppose us. People don't do what we want them to. Uh people disagree with us. People compete with us. Um people try to harm us. Sometimes we just don't like a person. And our natural reactions in those situations tend not to do any good. Some of them will do good in the short term. Things like rewards and punishments. We could get some short-term complaints from people. But in the long term, you know, they build resentment. They don't build build motivation. They don't build engagement. And And over the long term, that's what we need in order to work together. But there's like 50 70 years about what of research about what works. And so what I've what I what I do in that element is pull together that research and uh and give people an understanding of this is this is what our normal reaction would be. Here's why that doesn't work and here's how to use some techniques that that do work. So conflict and collaboration uh is all about how do you work with people when there is conflict cuz also you know very often it's through conflict that we come up with things that are better than either side would have come up with on their own. So we don't want to avoid all conflicts. A lot of conflict is constructive. We want to turn destructive conflict into constructive conflict. So it's not me versus you. It's you and me versus this issue. And so that's that's the conflict part. So each element um you know is is is part of mind shifting in general. My overall mission you know basically started because I'm you know I look around and I see so many people angry and fearful and feeling left out and feeling that they don't have agency, feeling that they're not being heard. And it's like but there's techniques that people could use so that they can turn that around and be productive and wouldn't that make them happier? Would Wouldn't that make them more productive? And wouldn't that allow us as as schools, as communities, as families, as societies to really jumpstart ourselves if if a critical mass of people had those skills? I um I you know, critical mass, you know, 7 billion people on the planet. I don't you know, what's this? What's a critical mass of people? So, kind of arbitrarily picked 5 million people. You know, 5 million people had this. That might be a you know, that that's a good enough number. remember to say that would they they would start leading all the rest of us to to solve all these issues and and and learn learn the techniques also. So I have this arbitrary number of 5 million. I don't know how I'm going to reach 5 million. But my first step was uh gee you know if I could reach the teachers and the teachers could scale that by teaching the students that's a great start and then education really could be the mechanism where we're giving every kid a chance to live a great adult life because that's that's the purpose of education. It isn't to teach ELA or math. I mean, those are just methods that we're using, but what we're really trying to do is prepare kids so they can be fully functioning um self-actualizing adults. And uh and so using the these techniques, I figured if teachers had them, teachers themselves would become more effective and and happier. and they'd be able to reach the kids. So I I each element is its own course. There's a course on resourcefulness, a course on resilience. Um there's a course on uh conflict and collaboration. I'm currently teaching those courses via Zoom to teachers. Um I teach the courses currently free, although I um what I have since the the courses that I'm teaching are now filling up and I have three other people who can teach the courses but those people need to be paid. So I have to figure out also you know what to do in order so that this becomes uh you know uh able to to continue without without just me. But I teach the courses right now um uh New York State teachers can go to a portal in New York State where they can get you know approved professional development and they can sign up for the course for free. I I teach the course in courses in Washington state so a any teacher in the state of Washington can go to PD enroller and register for the foot courses for free. And I'd love to teach the courses in more states, but I haven't figured out how to get into the other states yet.
Ryan Steuer: Yeah. Well, let's try to share some of it via the podcast. Right. So, you you said a lot of words that uh that we appreciate. U you know, there resilience, collaboration, you know, it's not if there's going to be conflict, it's when there's conflict, right? And how do we use that? Well, so let's kind of start there. What are some conflict resolution styles that that you kind of teach and then why is that important for our educators?
Mitch: So, so there's there's so much to that question. It's such a great question. Okay. Because I was I and as you were saying and I was going to go to one one possible answer, but I'm going to rewind and I'm going to go to a different answer. You say, "What are some conf conflict uh uh resolution styles?" And I'm going to go to that there are there are five different styles that we as people use to resolve conflict. And um and each person gravitates to one or two of those styles naturally, although we all we all use use all styles. So if you think about it and you're you're an administrator or you're an educator and you have somebody that something that you want somebody to do and you tell them to do that, you know, I want you to use this curriculum in your classroom. I want you to do this as your assignment. That's what's known as the compete style. In the compete style, you're telling somebody what to do and you're expecting them to do it. You don't really, you're not necessarily interested in what their objections are, what they wanted to do, any of that. You're telling them what to do. You're expecting them to do it. And you're expecting them to use the accommodate conflict resolution style. Because in the accommodate conflict resolution style, what you're doing is you're figuring out what the other person wants you to do and you're accommodating it. You're you're doing it. And so those are kind of two styles. Very often we use the compete style and the other person uses the avoid style. Like we tell somebody to do something and then they just don't do anything. Okay? And um and that's the that's the second style is is avoiding. You're just um you're procrastinating. You're uh you're avoiding talking to the person. you're not saying anything, you're hiding, you know, whatever it is, you're you're avoiding. And so those are the first three. There's compete, there's avoid. And and we use that also. We think, h, you know something, this teacher is really difficult, but you know something, they're, you know, they're they're tenured. I'm not going to be able to do anything with them. You know something, it's easier. I'm just not going to do anything. Or or as a teacher, you know, this student uh they're never doing their homework, but you know, something. I've got 20 other students in the classroom and I'm just not going to waste my time on this one student. I'm going to spend my time on the students who care. So that that's that's the avoid style. Um so there are two more styles and those styles are compete and sorry not compete are um collaborate and um oh jeez now I just forgot it's it also begins with a C um compromise. Collaborate and compromise. And in the compromise style. That's where neither one of us is probably going to be fully actualized, you know, really happy with the end result, but we're going to get through the conflict. So, it's like, you know, something I'm I'm a teacher. I've signed these 10 problems. The student hasn't been doing it. I'm going to go to the student and I say to the student, look, you know, if you do three of the problems, I'll pass you. Okay? So, at least you're doing, you know, so I'm not really happy because to really learn the material, you'd be learning 10 of them. You're you'd be doing 10 all 10 from them. You're not really happy because, you know, you're hoping to to go on your computer or your your your screen and watch videos or or whatever it is, you know, play games. Um, but uh but we'll compromise. You know, you do three, that'll that'll be good enough. Um whereas in collaborate, what you're trying to do is you're trying to satisfy the needs of both parties. So, I might be a teacher, a student is doing the homework, and I might sit down and really be interested in like what is stopping the student from from doing their homework. And it might be that they that that they don't want to do just essay problems or they don't want to do word problems, but if they did a project or they did a play or they um or they wrote an essay or they did a diarama that those that might ignite them. And so I'm getting what I really want done as a student doing the practice. They're doing something that they really want. And so we've kind of expanded the pie. It's not like win or lose or just gorgeous compromise. Uh we've we've come up with a way that both sides can be positive. So those are the five different styles and those those five when you think about the five different styles um the more flexible you are and the more you understand both your style and the other person's style, the more effective you can be in coming up with solutions to a person. It's not like any of those styles are wrong or any of those styles are right. There's times to use the compete style. If we see a child fighting with another child, we we can't spend the time using a collaboration style and we certainly don't want to avoid it and we certainly don't want to accommodate it. We have to stop the fight. And so, you know, there's times where something is urgent where people could harm themselves. We we have to use the compete style. There's times to avoid things like um you. The avoid style could be chosen because everybody is really upset right now and we need time to cool off. Uh the avoid style could be that um it's just not that important an issue to you and it's like you'd rather spend your time on something else. The accommodate style might be that you know so I know that this student is going about this on the wrong way but I'm going to let them do that and they're going to find out the consequences. Okay. Be and and use it as a learning opportunity. Well, you're using accommodate, you know, so that that may be a really good use and a really good time to use the accommodate. But the accommodate and the avoid and the compete and even the compromise can all be used from our let's say our survival minds where we're upset and we're angry and we're just reacting. Um or they could be used from our resourceful minds where um we look at the situation and decide this is the time I really need to use compete or this is the time I really need to use accommodate or this is a time that I really want to um compromise. The difference is with the collaborative style which is the collaborative style is one where you're building long-term commitment and agency for all the parties. And to achieve lasting change, you really do need that that collaborative style. You can't you can't do it every time, but you pick your times that you want to do it. In the collaborative style, both parties have to be in resourceful mode.
Ryan Steuer: And so, yeah. Yeah, I think there's a lot of value in in labeling those different styles, right? And we're going to move morph into some and some others. And I think in a project based learning classroom, we want to stay in collaborative mode and keep people engaged. And then I can think about my time in an eighth grade classroom where I've developed a lot of trust using the collaborative mode. Everybody's engaged and every now and then it's just, hey, you need to do this because I need it to get done, right? And students, right? And students would accommodate because we've been collaborative most of the time but there every now and then there's this time where hey this is a mandated thing I need to get it done they say okay we'll do that.
Mitch: Right you've built up their trust and it's not just a matter of building up the trust but also their understanding of your authority not just because you're the teacher but through the trust it's like this person has the authority and I want to do what they're saying not while they're looking I have to do what they're saying and so they turn their back I'm going to I'm going to go ahead and do what I want to do.
Ryan Steuer: Yeah. Yeah. So, let's keep going into some other brainbased uh approaches from from mind shift. And so, we're talking to a lot of leaders today, superintendent, principles, coaches. Uh what does that look like for them on a brainbased approach in a chaotic week? Because there's going to be a few of those, right? Where things just I don't want to say go off the rails, but principles and building leaders like they deal with a lot of stuff and they're pros and they get it, but it's also taxing and we don't always deal with it perfectly.
Mitch: Yeah. I'd say they get paid the big bucks. They just have to, you know, shoulder it. Do it, you know? Right. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.
Ryan Steuer: Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's what we think, right? But it's funny you you just there because I think everybody gets it. Like that's the that's what we see when people see a building principle. Like you got to deal with that. It turns out they're human though, right? Turns out they're humans. So it's a little more difficult.
Mitch: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I've never met a human principal or superintendent. It's just been—Right. Right. We're all we're we're all people. So we're all going to get upset. And I think, you know, as you're bringing that up is that one of the things is to give ourselves grace. Okay, we are human. You know, I I I'm a superintendent or I'm a principal. I'm going to fly off the handle sometimes. And um and it's just like, okay, you know, I flew off the handle. And part of that is to understand that when things go wrong is to instead of um reacting from anger or fear especially towards ourselves is to adopt what we call the um the sage mindset. And so the sage mindset is you look at something you know that happened in the past let's say and you look for uh well first of all you look you you you look at whether this is something that's really important because if you if you know there's this Pareto principle p a r e t o Pareto principle which is like 80% of the things that we do only have 20% of the of the importance and there's a 20% of the things we do that has 80% of the importance. So we want to spend our time on that 20%. So the first thing in the in this in the sage perspective is to look at what happened and say is this in the 80% or is this in the is this in the 20% where I really have to put my time in. And so you can just you can just look at it and you can say you know something you know you know I have a long-term relationship with this individual or I, you know, I'm in this job for for three or four years, one time where uh we got an outcome that—
Ryan Steuer: Can I give you the the teacher example that will go on forever? It's what do you do when a kid doesn't bring a pencil? If you put this out on social media, it will explode. Like you've got a whole slew of teachers that are say, "Hey, that's part of the 20 20% that doesn't matter. Give the kid a pencil." You've got another side that is just as fervent that says, If they don't have a pencil, they'll never learn how to be responsible. And Right.
Mitch: Yep. Yep. So, so the first thing is to look at it and decide, is this in the 80% that you really don't care or is this in the 20% that's really important. The next thing to look at is what is the gift that this gave you. Okay? And gifts come in, you know, no matter what happens, there's always a gift. And and there's really three different types of gifts. Um the first gift is what the gift of learning. What did you learn? by this and so this happened what did I learn from it okay the second gift is the gift to practice you know this was this was a time I tried to do this it didn't work out but what did I get a chance to practice and how can I practice that again so that's the second is is the gift of practice and the third is the gift of intention the gift of intention is some action that you're going to take as a result of it now in the gift of intention there's actually two different different types of gifts of intention. One type of gift of intention is is just like a personal reward. It's like, you know, something, this happened, I tried, it didn't really work out, but the fact that I tried, I'm going to have an ice cream cone, okay? Or a pedicure or I'm just I'm going to go for a walk and celebrate or, you know, something, okay? So, it's, you know, kind of a reward for yourself. And the other gift of intention is, you know, something I tried this and it didn't work out, but you know what? I can pull together a group of our teachers and we can have a discussion and we can learn from it. So this this is going to trigger me to pull together a you know or or I can talk to three other superintendents or three other principles and we can talk about this issue in different ways that that we could handle it and we can solve this you know we can come up with potential solutions that will work for much longer term that'll be much better than anything I could have come up with on my own. So um so the sage perspective is First of all, taking a look at this. Is this really important or is it was this not important? And if it is important, what are the what are what are the three gifts? What did I learn from it? What did I get a chance to practice? And what is this going to trigger me to do next? Either to reward myself or doing something which really solves uh solves the major problem. So I think that's one aspect of leadership from a mindshifting standpoint there. I mean, so if it were if if the whole thing of mind shifting purchase that then you know then we'd be done. But that's why there's three different courses. U that's a—
Ryan Steuer: that's probably 10% of the first 5% of the first book. Sure. So as you look into emotional regulation this mind shifting you mentioned the courses how are teachers using this in their classrooms like how because eventually even we're talking to leaders they have a lot of variables to look at. It's you know you've got test scores you got community perception But at the end of the day, we're in it for students. So everybody's what are the student outcomes for this? So how does this work when we're adjusting emotional regulation?
Mitch: Well, a teacher uses this for themselves and a teacher uses this for the students. So let's just talk about first of all the teacher using this for themselves um with their students and you know one of the things is to is the teacher starts understanding that and uh I guess self-awareness more like, wait a minute, I'm now in a uh survival state of mind. I'm I'm uh I'm feeling anxious or I'm feeling angry or I feel this tension in my in my chest or my shoulders. And understanding that when they're in a survival state of mind, their reactions aren't going to be in their best interest or their students best interest. And they they can do better. And so they the teachers themselves start to understand, oh, I'm in a survival or what I would call limbic because it's the limbic part of the brains. I'm in a limbic frame of mind. There's uh there's really there's four ways of calming yourself down from a limbic state of mind. And so understanding those four ways of calming yourself down and then saying, you know, when I'm when I'm once you're calm, it's like when I'm most resourceful, um I I have the ability to connect with people better. I have the ability to critically think better. You know something? I'm going to really focus on this one of my resourceful powers and see if I were that resource, if I were exploratory or if I were curious right now, how would I be handling this? And so stay in a resourceful frame of mind. And again, that's just one of the ways that that that you know that it benefits teachers from the from the standpoints of students. Once students start understanding the uh the concepts and the vocabulary, it it the uh it makes it a lot easier for the teachers to co-regulate the students. So when the teachers can explain to the students the idea of when they're in their their their lower brain or when they're when they're most resourceful or when it's time to to take a break or when it's time to connect with another person, they could just they can talk to the to the students say look do you think that you might be you know and I'm let's say a high school student you think that you might be in a limbic state of mind right now and so you're giving this you know and when the student has already been through the language of of of what it's like to be limbic versus what it's like to be sage or or resourceful it's like oh yeah well how would you what are the ways that that we've covered that you can you can you can uh go back to a resourceful state of mind why don't you take one of those and why don't you do it right now and then let's let's work on this together. So that's that's a way I think in the conflict and collaboration course we spend a lot of time on how do you phrase things so that you can influence people and we use a combination of motivational interviewing, nonviolent communication, and strength-based feedback and the combination of those three makes communications from a person of authority a lot more effective. than merely just telling the person what to do. So that's a long explanation of your question. But—
Ryan Steuer: yeah, but I can see, you know, when I was in the classroom, you know, I didn't have this vocabulary to to figure this out, right? But I can remember a time I think I wrote about it in the book um where I had a student named Alex and I asked him to read aloud and Alex was just having a bad day. So he stood up, slammed his book, you know, kind of cursed at me from all the way across the classroom like super loud and uh said, "Okay, Alex, I appreciate that you said Mr. Steuer as you were cursing me out, but—
Mitch: oh my gosh, I'm going to stop you right there, okay? Because what you just did there was so disarming to the other to the student, okay? You just used a strength and that there that, you know, starting off with something like that just relaxes that survival fightlight freeze and starts opening up the kid's mind. It was just Sorry, I had to stop you right there because that is a piece of mind shifting.
Ryan Steuer: Yeah, I think that's good. I think that's what I'm identifying as you're as you're talking about it, Mitch, is um because I've told that story to other educators. They said, "Well, how did you do that?" Like, I would have flipped out, you know, like they would have lost it. And I, however, again, however it worked, I could tell that Alex was having a bad day. Like, Alex and I had a good relationship. That's not how he would normally act. And maybe that disarming piece made him also go, "Oh, this is weird. I normally do this with Mr. Steuer. So, let's go down that let's go down that trail a little bit of strength-based feedback. What are some other ways that that that can look like in the classroom?
Mitch: So, in in Finland um in the strengthbased feedback, they use a methodology they call cases. Okay. Uh to give feedback to student and cases, you know, Cass. The C stands for context. So, the first thing that you do is you explain the context of what happened. this is what happened and you do it in a way that is non-confrontational. So it's like um you know you're you're you're acting disrespectful would be an accusatory way of phrasing it. It's like you were talking very loudly in class when I was trying to talk would be a non-accus, you know, just a fact-based way of of explaining the context. Um and then the action that the other person did. Okay, this is this was your action. You know, you t you were talking really loudly. Um and then um and then the strength that they showed, you know, you were you show that you were really in touch with what you were feeling as you were doing this and you're very good about that. Okay. Or you use, you know, Mr. Steuer instead of calling me an idiot, you know. Um you would never say it like that, but you know, but but um the third thing is the strength. And then the fourth is the effect. That's the E. Um you know, whatever happened. You know, in doing that, what what uh the entire class became disruptive and 20 other students couldn't proceed with the class? Okay. And so the possible next step in order to improve is um so what do you think that we could do next time you start feeling frustrated or what do you think that we or or you could suggest something to the student? Do you think that you could do that? And then it's important with this with that step that you also confirm that there's buy in. Like, do you think that we could do this? um, how does that sound? Or my favorite way of doing that is the is the um 1 to 10. How do you feel? So, okay. So, we've come up with this is what what you'd like to do. Um, you know, where one this we've come up with this this is this is the next action. If one is you're sure this isn't going to work and you're not even going to try it or 10, you're positive this is going to work and you're absolutely going to try it. Where do you feel on this? Is it between 1 and 10? And and it's interesting because I was talking to somebody about this yesterday and you know the person said, "Well, let's say if I say a seven," I said to the person, "Well, what happens if if if I said a seven to that?" He says, "Well, I would I would try to get you to an eight." Which is, and there's nothing wrong with that, but the way I use it is that when the person says, "I feel a seven or even I feel a three." I then ask the person, "Well, why didn't you pick a lower number?" So even if I said a three, I would come back, well, why didn't you pick a two or one on that? And then the person in describing why they didn't pick a lower number is convincing themselves to do it. Mhm. Okay. But if the person picks a one, then you know the person wasn't going to do it anyhow. And so you've gotten valuable information and you know your job isn't done because you you you need a resolution to this. Maybe your resolution going back is is to say, well, you know something, maybe this maybe we should talk about this later on. So kind of avoid. Um or maybe it's like well you know let's let's talk about this some more maybe collaborate um or maybe it's like no you know something this is really important you have to do this. So you can choose which style you want to use um if you're aware of the different styles but that cases is explaining the context explaining the action that the person did what strength they showed in doing that action the effect that that had and then finally the step that um that you them to take or that they've agreed to take in order for that uh uh in order for a better outcome next time.
Ryan Steuer: Yeah. And I I again I think the wording I think the the structures are helpful. I'm guessing as our listeners are tuning in it could be easy to say uh I can't do all that in you know the 5-second interaction. But I think once you internalize that once you share it with students you know it's just something that you're all doing. You're trying to be aware of right this emotional regulation idea. So how do you and I've got Uh, I think I've got an answer to this, but uh, how do you get skeptical educators to buy into this idea of emotional regulation? Uh, my my answer would be that you've got students in your classroom that, you know, if if I would have dealt poorly with Alex, there were three other guys in there that say, "Oh, that'll get Mr. Steuer going. I'm going to push that button tomorrow." Right? And it's like, once you can see, I mean, there are students that are looking to push buttons. And once you show your button, then it can be pushed multiple times. But I'm sure you've got educators that are skep ical of this uh emotional regulation is being important. How do you deal with that?
Mitch: Okay. So, I'm going to do that. I'm going to answer that question first, but I do want to raise something that maybe we'll go into later. You said, you know, a person I just went through this cases method and a person is going to say like I can't think of all those things when I'm in the heat of the moment. So, I want to get back to that also. Okay. But the question is how do you deal with with the skeptics? And I'll say you can't really deal with the skeptics directly. Like you can't say you can't show people it's been proven to work here and it's been proven you know it because when people are skeptic or they disagree they're actually in limpic mode or survival mode themselves. And when they're in survival mode their brain is being flooded with stress hormones uh adrenaline and cortisol. Those stress hormones are getting are reinforcing what they've already decided is true. and they're closing their resourceful parts of the brain, their prefrontal cortex, so that the prefrontal cortex is unable to react to new information or logic. So you so directly approaching them is is is never going to work. Now, one one of the things that I found that that it's kind of it's a little bit sneaky is that when I offer these courses, I talk about how the courses increase the ability for students to do critical thinking and to have perseverance or grit and to do and to do innovative thinking. And inevitably teachers are taking this course and they're saying, you know, I was required to take professional development. I saw this course, it increases my students ability to do critical thinking and have more perseverance and that's what students really need. And so I took the course for those reasons. The next thing that happened is when the teachers get into the course within the first 15 or 20 minutes they're thinking my gosh I'm not living this myself. Sure. You know I'm having the same fight with my spouse that I've always and these things I'm having the same issues with my kids. I'm having these issues with my parents. I'm having these issues with my administrators. I have to learn these techniques for myself. Sure. And then oh my and this is what I can teach the kids and now I see these techniques I can use to teach the kids to be better critical thinkers because I can get them out of their own limpic or their survival brains and into their resourceful or or their sage brains. So it's kind of like a sneaky approach is um and when I when I talk to uh administrators also it's it's not like trying to convince them with the facts it's like look you know you guys you know there's the the there's the solution of the year and we always come up with like we just need more technology or we just need we just need to implement problem based learning and then all of our our our problems are going to go away. We just need to do more test prep. And none of these are getting us where we want to go. And so if if we could open up the minds of the students so that they were self-motivated, they were more self-directed, all of these issues, it's not like they they go away. But all these issues then become solvable because we're all looking to solve the problems. And so that's another way that I that I that I approached it with with administrators is, you know, you this this this is the precondition for any of the solutions that you want to actually work because if people don't have the right mindsets, none of the solutions are going to work and we've seen that for 25 years in education.
Ryan Steuer: Yeah. So Mitch, let me give you an example of our workshops that we do with educators. Yep. And with leaders. So we We do these three-day kind of boot camps, three very intense days of learning, and then we do virtual coaching afterwards. Um, and in day one, we we have them live through a PBL unit essentially. So, there's this entry event, and we say, "Hey, you're going to build this PBL unit over 3 days." And then we say, and at the end of 3 days, we're have this expo and you're going to present your PBL unit to your superintendent, to community partners, to principles. And I just imagine that we've got some teachers are really excited Some are filling with that cortisol and that adrenaline, right? And you know, so then we give this time and we ask, we do this need to know session. Say, well, what do you need to know in order to be able to do that? We say, we're going to do over the next three days is we're going to create workshops specifically for you so that we answer every single one of your questions. So every time you ask a question, we're going to have a workshop. And we start to do that. And this has worked really well over the last decade, right? Teachers love the work. So now I'm just trying to figure out like the brainbased piece behind it, right? Because You mentioned the cortisol. I I we've softened it. We used to have people cry on day two, right? Because it was like I think they just kind of got overwhelmed in there somewhere, right? And so we've kind of figured out some of these things. But is that what's happening? Like we've created a really a pretty stressful scenario. Here's project- based learning that you don't know about. You're now going to present it publicly within 3 days to people that are higher ups than you and some people you don't know. So again, cortisol flooding in, adrenaline flooding in. But then we create this trying to create a very safe space, a psychologically safe space where you can learn through that, right? What what what are we doing well? What should we adjust? Maybe what do you what do you see?
Mitch: Well, I think I there's so much in that that you're doing well. I think one of the things is you're keep you give people what the end result is going to be. Okay. Everybody likes knowing where they're heading. Um people get fearful when they think, "Oh my gosh, I have to accomplish all this." So, you're giving them like, "Well, okay, here's the end result, but let's just concentrate on the very next step. The very next step is for you to list, you know, some of the things that you want to do or the very next step is for you to learn this particular point. And the third is that you're giving them agency is you're allowing them to come up with and and facilitating them and come up with what they need to do and what they want to do. So those are, you know, and there's and there's probably more, but those are three things that you're doing incred, you know, that basically embody shifting. Yeah, super good. It's I think it's important to to kind of figure out why those things are working. So, I'm enjoying this. But you wanted to go back to cases. So, let's do that and how we can integrate that and then we'll get to uh where people can find your resources and courses and those things. So, so yeah, and it isn't just above cases. It's like any one of these techniques is, you know, you look at it and you intellectually understand it, but you don't um you can't use it in the moment because in the moment you don't have time to access your, you know, your prefrontal cortex. Really, the prefrontal cortex takes two or three seconds to to engage. And you're, you know, you're talking to somebody and you have like a half second, a second to to react. So, you want you need to be able to build the things that that you're fluent in. So, in order to use cases, you have to you have to build your fluency in cases. And you can build your fluency in cases by say play acting in um either imagining a situation and imagining that you're that you're doing it. Okay. Um and and play or finding a partner and say let me try this on you and have the partner give you feedback and then let the partner try it and you give the partner feedback or even doing it with AI is to say okay here's a situation um I would handle it in cases by doing so and so how did um how did I do and have the AI answer you also but it's through practice that we build fluencies. And it isn't until something is fluent that um that you really get it. In the courses we we we do that we um you know the courses are are over Zoom they take place over six or eight two-hour sessions during the six during any one session people are breaking up into small groups they're trying things out in small groups and in addition between sessions um people uh have uh are tasked with trying out a couple of the things that they learned in the previous session. They fill out a reflection and then the next session we call on some volunteers to talk about things that they tried and what worked and what didn't work and in every single reflection that every person does, we as the instructors, we give the person feedback. So every reflection we we we respond to and then just as you have people do presentations in the in the very last session. Every participant creates um some like a lesson or lesson plan uh based on something that they learned during the course and they generally create a lesson plan. If they're if they're teachers, they're creating lesson plan that they could use with their own students. If they're administrators, it could be something like um a professional development session. If they're an art teacher, they might develop a poster. a music teacher. We've had music teachers develop songs and then you and then you present that to the rest of the class and then all the people who have been through the classes have have access to all of the lesson plans that have and artifacts that have been created by all the participants who've ever taken the courses.
Ryan Steuer: Yeah. Excellent. So, you're I love the role playing. I think that's super important because it's going to be a new a new tool that we're using, right? And we want to be able to to make it more automatic.
Mitch: Yeah, exactly. And then you can build the structures in place to to help assist with that, I'm sure. So, and then you're crowdsourcing some of the um some of the lesson plans that are created so we can see a bunch of them. That sounds awesome. Y Well, great, great, Mitch. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing uh the emotional regulation, the mind shifting piece, and letting us know about these resources. We'll put them in the show notes. So, if you go to the show notes, whether you're watching this on YouTube or uh via the podcast, it'll also go out through our newsletter uh as this comes out. So look for it in those different places. You can access those. Mitch, any last thoughts for our our educators?
Mitch: Well, two things. So the that you know the case method, um I I sent you a PDF and so that's that's the resources. So when somebody goes to your website or looks at the podcast, um they can download there's actually two different PDFs that that they can download. If people want to get, you know, people want to learn more about mindshifting, my website is mindshiftingwithmitch.com. and they can access that. I would love an opportunity to teach these resources to more schools, more districts, more states. And so, um, if you have the ability to bring me into a school or district or a state, uh, please reach reach out and and I'd love to talk to you. If you're in New York State or if you're in Washington State, um, you can in Washington state it's through PD Enroller. Uh, you can you can find the mind shifting class is in New York State. Um it's through New York State uh teacher centers um that the mind shifting classes are are given and they're free to educators in those two states.
Ryan Steuer: Cool. I love that they've got access to those already. So, yep. Um great. Thanks, Mitch. Thanks for being on. Appreciate you sharing with our with our group.
Mitch: Uh thank you. Thank you, Ryan. And those uh three-day workshops sound like incredibly helpful for teachers.
Ryan Steuer: Yeah. Yeah. We we love them. And it's I think we're going to dive a little more into what the brain research says about, you know, why some of these things are working. So, appreciate the—
Mitch: So, there's two books you can you can use to uh you know, and you can steal any of the material.
Ryan Steuer: Oh, perfect. Perfect. Okay. All right. PBL Simplified audience, you this has been a leadership episode. You got some great nuggets here. You likely want to share this episode uh with your team, with your leaders, with your teachers. Some people are going to grab it right away. Some people are going to push back a little bit, but you definitely need to to nudge or or ooch into uh this work. Your successful teachers are doing this right now, right? is ones that are really relating to teacher to their students. So, start to give some wording to it. Give some vocabulary so everybody can get on board. And as you do that, share those stories. We'd love to share them on the podcast. Go out and lead inspired.
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