Dec. 9, 2025
How Schools Build Safety, Trust, And Belonging with Kevin Dahill-Fuschel
Send us a text What if the behavior you see as “disrespect” is actually distress asking for a safer way in? We sit down with Kevin Dahill-Fuschel of Counseling in Schools to unpack the practical heart of trauma-informed education: how to read behavior as information, build trust without lowering academic standards, and create classrooms where belonging fuels effort. Kevin takes us inside decades of school-based counseling across New York City, from the aftermath of 9/11 and Hurricane S...
What if the behavior you see as “disrespect” is actually distress asking for a safer way in? We sit down with Kevin Dahill-Fuschel of Counseling in Schools to unpack the practical heart of trauma-informed education: how to read behavior as information, build trust without lowering academic standards, and create classrooms where belonging fuels effort.
Kevin takes us inside decades of school-based counseling across New York City, from the aftermath of 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy to the long tail of COVID. He shares how teachers can shift daily interactions—simple compliments, noticing prosocial acts, realistic goals—to break cycles of suspension and avoidance. We talk about the power of community identity, why early-year rituals matter, and how interest-based groups help differentiation feel supportive instead of stigmatizing.
Bullying gets a hard reset for the smartphone era. Kevin explains why the true danger is invisibility online, and why limiting devices during school hours is boosting engagement and making harm easier to spot. You’ll hear actionable ideas: and ask better questions :What did you post? Who tagged you? How did it feel?—so problems surface early. We also argue for measuring social growth and hope alongside test scores, bringing basic mental health literacy into classrooms, and modeling adult regulation so students see what recovery looks like.
We close with nuts-and-bolts choices that shape culture, from co-creating community agreements about headphones to using free, bilingual tools from Counseling in Schools’ Partners in Healing hub. If you’re an educator, parent, or counselor, you’ll leave with strategies you can try tomorrow and resources to go deeper.
Kevin can be found at https://www.counselinginschools.org/team/kevin-dahill-fuchel/
Subscribe, share this with a colleague who needs a lift, and leave a review with your top takeaway so we can keep these conversations moving.
00:00 - Meet Kevin And The Mission
03:36 - Violence, Loss, And School Avoidance
07:30 - Teacher Expectations Vs Student Reality
11:23 - Building Trust And Repairing Cycles
17:09 - Belonging As An Academic Strategy
22:23 - Managing One Struggling Student In A Full Class
27:52 - Bullying, Social Media, And Visibility
33:55 - Community Moments That Bridge Divides
38:12 - Measure Hope, Not Just Test Scores
41:49 - Teaching Mental Health Literacy
46:24 - Adults As Models Of Regulation
50:07 - Headphones, Neurodivergence, And Agreements
WEBVTT
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Hello everyone and welcome to today's episode.
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Today we are going to be discussing topics that involve trauma-informed training.
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With us today is Kevin Dahill Fischelle.
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He is part of a 40-year-old organization in New York City that helps provide schools with the proper training and tools to handle situations such as when 9-11 occurred and Hurricane Sandy occurred, to name a couple of the major incidences.
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Of course, COVID that affected everybody, but especially education systems.
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And he is with us here today to share his expertise, area of expertise in trauma-informed training, what he does to provide support to schools and communities at large, and to provide us some takeaways that we can all use within our own communities.
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So without further ado, let's please welcome Kevin.
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Thank you, Sonia.
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It's great to be here.
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Thank you so much for being on here today.
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So, Kevin, why don't you tell us a little bit about you?
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Tell us about how you got started in trauma-informed training and in the work you do.
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Sure.
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Well, as you mentioned, I work at a 40-year-old organization.
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It's called Counseling in Schools.
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We're a nonprofit, community-based organization here in New York City.
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We're currently located in 54 schools.
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Last year we served just under 5,000 students, 2,000 parents or community members, and then about as well as did training for about 2,000 of the staff here in New York City on a number of topics, and certainly heavily focusing on understanding trauma and how to be really informed when you're engaging with students or communities where trauma is perhaps acute in the situations like you've mentioned, or in some instances, various communities, there's there's sort of a steady stream of things that can continually traumatize and create a complex of traumas that are difficult to sort of navigate through, particularly to be successful then in the education system.
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So I, you know, started in this uh organization back in 1993, a long time ago.
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And when I first uh was working in the organization as a counselor, I was really struck by the impact of um the violence in uh on the I was working in high school and on the impact on the students who I was sort of assigned to support who were struggling with attendance, and the number of them that had either witnessed murder, had murder as somewhere in their history, either uh sibling or cousin or perhaps parent, but really like traumatic, violent death that had impacted their lives in such a way that they were really not responding to what the school system was was trying to engage them in.
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Um and as I sort of noticed that pattern, it it it sort of I think set me on this path to start to try to understand what approach would be needed to really engage with with youth who have had those experiences.
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Aaron Powell And where was the school located within the city when you were working with people who've experienced murder of a family member or have witnessed it?
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Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, that school was located in downtown Brooklyn.
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If people know the city, that's sort of an area near what used to be known.
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There used to be a hub there around Williamsburg Bank that was kind of the landmark.
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If you know that area, you probably wouldn't be able to find it anymore.
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But Brooklyn Academy of Music is down there.
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But like most high schools in New York City, this school drew from communities all around that area.
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So it was really pulling from students in lots of the rest of Brooklyn.
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And this was what was known at the time, or would come to be known as an unscreened school.
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So students who would have applied to other schools that may have decided that they weren't right for their school, and the city needs to place students somewhere.
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So students, this may not have been their first choice.
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Some it may have been.
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It was really a mix.
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It was a very large at that time, large comprehensive high school, about 3,000 students.
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Those have since changed radically here in New York City.
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But but that's where I was at the time.
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Total nine through twelve, you know, secondary school.
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And when people were being integrated into school systems, what were some of the issues that you found?
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Because a lot of times when people go into school systems, you're dealing with really complex interplay because not only are you getting exposed to all sorts of people that, you know, maybe this may be your first time being exposed to someone, you know, than what you who grew up differently, or maybe from a different cultural background, things like that than you were.
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So you're learning about that.
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But then also, you know, the learning styles, you know, you have to adjust to like the teachers and the classrooms and I just so much that goes into it.
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So what were some of those things that kind of stood out for you?
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I think I think the first thing that stood out to me was the need for the adults in the school community to get better information about what the be sort of they they saw as behaviors, but really what those indicators were in terms of what those students were able to do or not do, or what what was the best way to interact with them, both on an individual level but also on a group level in terms of a classroom.
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I think, you know, there was uh all of those factors that you just mentioned needed to be sort of integrated a little bit more, you know, in the way that my training, my training was as a social worker, um, still is, I'm a clinical social worker by license and training.
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And there was a, you know, methodology in that in terms of how you would sort of, you know, sort of the the mantra of meet someone where they are, so it would allow you to kind of do a little bit more of an inquiry before you started making some decisions about what how you were going to engage or interact with someone.
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And I think that was not that was not something that was part of teacher training by and large.
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I think the expectation was that the teacher was going to be in charge and that the status of their of their status in that room was going to be enough to sort of, you know, get the responses that they expected from the students.
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And they may or may not learn as quickly as they would have wanted, but the sort of interaction on a interpersonal level would have been different than they were getting.
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And I think they were interpreting that quickly into sort of a pattern that they didn't realize that they were actually helping regenerate with their responses.
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There was almost playing into the hands of the trauma, and the students were just kind of regurgitating, if you would, some of their negative experiences and projecting them onto this individual who they didn't know and didn't know them.
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And, you know, there were just some negative cycles.
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So at some point, students might get suspended or they might just stop coming to school.
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Or, you know, another way that that showed up a lot for me is one of my tasks in the school was taking students who were appeared to be on the verge of dropping out and finding out what was going on and trying to encourage them back into school by addressing some of the things that were interfering in that process.
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And so when I was able to build trust with them, I could learn things, illnesses at home, but like I said, the other trauma that they had experienced that they had never processed or dealt with and got them connected to.
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I mean, I could do some of that treatment, but school-based, you're really better off having them treated in a in a much more sort of medical-based clinic and getting people some of the help that they needed, getting them back into school, having them go into a classroom, and at times having a very frustrated teacher with his or her classroom turn to that student and say, Well, I don't know why you're here.
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You're not gonna pass anyway.
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And it was just kind of like, you know, oh, all the air goes out of the balloon and everything that you're trying to do.
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And this young person is standing there, and you, you know, through my relationship with them, have got them to think, like, okay, I'm gonna this is gonna be hard.
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I don't know if I can do it, but I'm gonna give it a try because I know my future is important and all these things.
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And someone, you know, and I and I know it wasn't intent, it it probably wasn't intended to land in the way that it landed, the way it was said.
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I mean, it sounds horrible to say, but I think someone was saying that out of frustration.
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They had students in their class that weren't learning, they were getting judged on how many students passed the class and what their test scores were.
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And here comes a student, let's say the first semester is going to end in January, and here comes a student at the end of November, hasn't been there all year.
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That student probably isn't gonna pass, but maybe you don't know their motivation.
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You might want to kind of give them a chance.
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So it was being then to work with that teacher and start to say, okay, we have to talk about this.
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Like this, while that student may not pass your class, they may end up becoming a real productive member of the classroom culture because this is someone who the other students are looking at saying, like, hey, this person just showed up, look at them working, maybe I can do it too.
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Or, you know, there's other things to lean on in a situation.
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And and I think again, I don't mean to throw, you know, something at just the teacher because I do know they were under pressure to get certain kinds of results.
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And this student might have looked like they were going to undermine that.
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So we had to work around those things.
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And you know, I think a lot of times too, you know, this goes into that whole bureaucracy of education in that, you know, schools get funded a lot of times based off of test scores and how they place.
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I know I've heard of some of my clients that would come in and talk about how they would have statewide testing, you know, and I'm a therapist here in Illinois, and you know, they would come and talk about the statewide testings they would have.
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And, you know, I believe some of them have mentioned, you know, their schools get funded by how many people will pass the test and pressure on teachers too to make sure that the students are living up and then, you know, they go to college to get their teaching degree to teach.
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So I think they also then don't understand necessarily unless you go into perhaps maybe special education where you are dealing with more, like you're exposed to more of that, you know, like emotional, what they used to call, I don't know if they're still calling it now in schools, emotional handicap or um, and I I don't even like that word, but you know, people who have mood disorders, people who have like learning disabilities, ADHD, autism, things like that.
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And I feel like unless teachers get an actual course on how to maybe provide empathy, I I could see how it's difficult just all around for both and not only the kid, because the kid is trying to understand what in the heck is going on around here.
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And then you got the teacher being like, I have to do this b you know, job and I have to keep earn my keep here, otherwise I won't be in a job, right?
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So it's kind of like it's just a very filtered through system.
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I agree.
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I think you described it really well, and I think that those were the things that I think over my time here and working in New York City, for the most part, I think there is a adjustment to those kind of expectations.
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I think the understanding that most teachers have, not whether they have the tools yet, but the understanding that most teachers have coming into the system or those who've been in the system for a long time as teachers, that you have to find some point of contact with the students in your classroom that that lives on a relational level with them.
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That is in your your status simply as the teacher in the room is, you know, gives you a job, as you said, right?
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Like that that's your livelihood.
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But that's not your rapport and your ability to teach with students and that how you're able to understand who they are, let them see enough of who you are as well, and really have a connection.
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Because, you know, it's really my firm belief that that learning is transmitted through a relationship and and and then tools that that relationship will allow to have happen, whether it's you know, good techniques that it that a teacher has for being able to communicate the material or have someone practice the material or see the material, but for for the young person to trust to go along with those techniques, they have to feel that that they have some connection to that person that they're comfortable with.
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Um again, I'm not talking about everybody's best friend, but something that is a connection.
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And and and I think, you know, we work with teachers, part of the trauma and full-in practice from our perspective is taking those kinds of steps to, you know, learn a little bit more about your student and don't expect, you know, that what you can learn about them on day one is what the only thing you're gonna know about them, but that you're going to have a relationship that you're going to build with each student and with your classroom as a group, right?
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As a whole, they become sort of this one thing that work with you in a particular way and you work with them in a particular way, and then it breaks down to individual parts.
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But when you see it that way and you understand it that way, I think you set your course on what you want your students to learn within your content area, but also set your course within what you want your students to be like as people in your room and how you're going to demonstrate that and work with that with them.
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And and part of that then those tools are understanding, well, what does trauma look like in the classroom?
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Like what does that manifest as?
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And how does it often misinterpret it?
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The biggest one we hear, you know, is well, this student is disrespectful.
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So you you really have to peel that one back a lot to try to say, like, well, what what is the respect that you were looking for that they didn't get?
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What was it that indicates?
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Sometimes it's it's you know, cursing or a language or something that, you know, clearly is intended to sort of push you away.
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It wasn't intended to sort of be a warm welcome to you as a teacher, but to understand, then, okay, understand just that.
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This student is is pushing away from me.
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What, you know, let me let me just take their cue from that for a minute, not take it as a personal thing, but let me understand, is there another way in?
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Is there another opportunity when I see that student?
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You know, it might be like, hey, that's a really, you know, I I like that hat that you're wearing today, or I see, I see that you, you know, you helped some and so pick up their pencil and then dropped it some, you know, like some little thing that you can just sort of, you know, give them another opportunity to connect with you on and don't expect much, but just know that if you do the little relational things, at some point, you know, you're gonna see that what you saw as a disrespect just dissipate, you know, and it and it will evolve.
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It will evolve if you let it evolve into something else.
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Because I do think that the students come into our classrooms with if not an interest in learning, a curiosity in what's gonna happen.
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You've got to get that to an interest in learning, and we get that to an interest in learning.
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But students who have been, you know, you come from a highly traumatized background or communities that are, you know, to some extent might feel like they're under siege on a daily basis.
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You come into a classroom, you have to really ease into what that relationship is gonna be like.
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Assumptions, assumptions aren't gonna cut it.
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They're gonna, they're gonna be the problem.
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Absolutely.
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And, you know, there are many people who, you know, a lot of kids, unfortunately, that get labeled as like oppositional, defiant.
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But truth of the matter is they're really not, though.
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A lot of times, like, for example, where there was a kid who was not participating in gym class, but that's because he hadn't eaten early in the day, right?
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And it's like telling somebody, yeah, let's go do this hard workout or go run around.
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Think about it, is in order to do that, you have to actually have some nutrition in your body so your body can have that energy.
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And um a lot of times, you know what it wasn't uncommon.
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I know, like when I was growing up, for example, people were quick, like schools were quick to label way, shape, or form, right?
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A person just being emotionally handicapped or just like a problem child.
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And there are some school districts, like I know in the school district I grew up in, and I wrote about in my book as well, that would love to just get rid of kids that don't fit their material, right?
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It wasn't that was the easy out, just ship them to the town next door, bust them, pick them up.
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And I think that, you know, a lot of times they're, you know, a lot of people look for the easy way out.
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And I feel like, you know, finding a way to reach to a person in a different way to understand that person more will help explain, you know, like that person you said, like that example you gave of a teacher saying, well, this person's disrespectful.
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Well, you know, there might be a reason why it appears like they're disrespectful.
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They're not maybe not meaning to do it.
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Maybe they're just frustrated because they can't learn the material, maybe they're not understanding the material, maybe they're just hungry, maybe they have, who knows, maybe they were up late because they had to hear the parents fight all night, right?
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Something going on, right?
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Right.
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So there's a different, you know, way to look at that.
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And I think that's even though it's a little more of a challenging route, it's a lot more of a rewarding route because I always say without any risk, there's no reward.
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Absolutely.
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And and I think, you know, it's not to, as you put it, I like the way you sort of explain that, that you're looking for understanding.
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It's not looking to excuse something.
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And I think sometimes, you know, when I speak to teachers or other educators, you know, they're concerned that like, well, there needs to be a consequence and this isn't, you know, this shouldn't be allowed, and these kind of things.
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And no disagreement on that.
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There there may be systems that you would want to think about, but I think where I'd want someone to go first is to try to reach for understanding.
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And then again, through that relationship, you might be able to help someone know, like, okay, if you, you know, when you're frustrated or upset or this happens, what can we do to so that you don't end up coming in, you know, picking a fight with somebody or just for or the first time that you're challenged with with a problem academically, you're going to rip the paper or yell at the teacher or do like what else can we help you with in that situation?
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Because now I understand where this is starting.
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Let's change where it where it ends, let's change where it takes you.
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And we'll talk about is there something we can do to sort of support around where it starts?
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So maybe it doesn't have to be that start, but let's give you some tools for how not to end up in a situation where now you really are up against the discipline code or you really are up against, you know, just just the the demeanor that this school is willing to support having students be a part of, and we really want you to stay here.
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And I and I think that's one of the things, that that last sentence, you know, feeling that you belong and feeling that you're wanted.
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In any situation, no matter who you are, you could have been from the best, you know, perfect, you know, ideal life, no challenges.
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Trauma is just a nice word you learned in a dictionary, you don't experience it, but you're just you want to feel like you belong.
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You want to feel that you want it.
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And when you're challenged on a number of things, emotionally or socially, even more so.
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If someone can make you feel like you belong and you wanted, man, that goes a long way towards getting to how can I best understand you so that we can get mutual goals accomplished here.
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I really want you to learn this material.
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You really want to, you know, be successful, like you really want to move out of this grade.
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I really want you to leave this grade with more knowledge than you came in in it with.
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Let's let's join up on this because I really want you to be here and I really I really think you're an important part of this community.
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And being able to sometimes represent that directly, but think about your school environment.
00:21:02.360 --> 00:21:04.200
Is that being communicated to the students?
00:21:04.360 --> 00:21:10.440
Is it being communicated that we want you here in messaging that's around and the way people interact with each other?
00:21:10.600 --> 00:21:14.200
Or is the message like, I can't wait for this to be over?
00:21:14.360 --> 00:21:15.320
When are you gonna leave?
00:21:15.560 --> 00:21:17.640
Day's almost done, thank God.
00:21:17.799 --> 00:21:27.880
You know, like all of those kind of things that sometimes as adults you don't even you know, you don't think about the impact that some things might be having on the people who are you're there to teach.
00:21:28.360 --> 00:21:30.200
They wanna know that you wanna be there with them.
00:21:30.279 --> 00:21:34.759
They wanna know that they belong, they wanna know that they're So how would a teacher go about this?
00:21:34.840 --> 00:22:00.360
Like let's say that you're a public school teacher Um, and you have 40 kids in a classroom, and the vast majority are doing everything, so they're doing their homework, they're participating in class, being quiet during lecture, they're doing what they're supposed to do, but then you have the kid who's not really so much with the rest of the class, right?
00:22:00.680 --> 00:22:10.279
So how, you know, so I guess the question would be then how am I supposed to actually do this when I have all these other kids without it being unfair to the other kids?
00:22:10.600 --> 00:22:25.240
Yeah, I think that's certainly a valid and important question and certainly something that, you know, we don't want to move education towards sort of the lowest, if you would, and don't like the the the high-low terms, but I think you know what I mean.
00:22:25.400 --> 00:22:31.400
Like we want to have everybody reaching to go beyond their beyond their capacity and continuing to reach for higher.
00:22:31.560 --> 00:22:42.840
I think the the thing that I look to in that particular situation, I mean, there are pedagogical techniques for differentiated instruction, which I'll leave to those people who have that strong knowledge set.
00:22:43.000 --> 00:22:51.720
But I think how I look at that scenario is I I first think about how has the the classroom formed as a group?
00:22:51.880 --> 00:23:01.480
What has what's been done to create a sense of community in the classroom for everyone outside of the content area of what's being learned?
00:23:01.640 --> 00:23:05.320
Because every like what's what's something that can be done that brings everybody together?
00:23:05.480 --> 00:23:13.560
And usually those are things that can happen more at the beginning of a school year than once things get going on, but they can be full, you can fall back on them.
00:23:13.720 --> 00:23:16.200
They're sort of like larger activities.
00:23:16.279 --> 00:23:31.400
They might be breaking up into smaller groups, doing certain, you know, exploration activities, things that are, you know, could be non-competitive type of games, but could just be some, you know, ways of identifying something that might be aligned to the subject matter, but not quite in the subject matter.
00:23:31.560 --> 00:23:50.120
And then bringing people back together so that if I'm the student who I know I'm not nearly as strong as you are in this particular area, but now we're connected around, we we've sort of shared our connectivity around maybe it's a local sports team, maybe it's uh an interest in some other odd interest.
00:23:50.200 --> 00:23:59.880
Maybe I know there's three other people who are musicians in the class or four other people who like manga or Japanese art or whatever, part of that little group now within that.
00:24:00.120 --> 00:24:06.120
I may not be feeling great about my ability to do this topic, but I feel connected to the other students in the class.
00:24:06.279 --> 00:24:10.120
Then as the teacher is differentiating for me, I'm gonna feel okay.
00:24:10.200 --> 00:24:15.960
I'm gonna feel better about it, not so alone and isolated because I still have connection to the other students in the class.
00:24:16.120 --> 00:24:26.840
I think that problem comes in as you described it when that young person feels so isolated that they demand a kind of attention that doesn't allow the teacher to get to everybody else.
00:24:27.080 --> 00:24:33.960
And that that student is really not not really paying attention to the impact they're having on everybody else because they're just so focused on themselves.
00:24:34.039 --> 00:24:44.200
Like they need this attention right now because, or they need this distraction so that people don't attend to the fact that they don't know the work or they can't do the work or some whatever their challenge is.
00:24:44.440 --> 00:24:49.560
If you can connect it that way, then I think you have a better chance of differentiating your instruction.
00:24:49.799 --> 00:25:06.759
And then if it's a larger issue, right, you involve other people in the school who might be well suited to have a person like myself as a counselor in the school, you know, to sort of engage with the student outside of class and in another context, or the teacher, if you have a good enough relationship, you know, hey Kevin, is there something going on?
00:25:06.920 --> 00:25:08.360
Is there something I can help you with?
00:25:08.519 --> 00:25:11.880
You know, do we do you are you interested in this subject enough to get some tutoring?
00:25:12.039 --> 00:25:16.120
I think your grade might be helped, or, you know, is there something else going on here?
00:25:16.200 --> 00:25:17.960
Like that'd be an honest thing.
00:25:18.200 --> 00:25:41.160
But I but I don't, I do want to make a plug for the for the impact that a community of students, the feeling of students being in community with other students can have on allowing those to have different connections and different ways of learning without it being so competitive and such a sense of like I'm a loser, they're the winners, I'm the out group, they're the in-group.
00:25:41.320 --> 00:25:45.799
You know, you can just sort of keep people connected in the in the community around a number of other things.
00:25:45.880 --> 00:25:47.640
And I think that's an opportunity.
00:25:47.799 --> 00:25:50.440
You got to think it that way, I think, as your year starts.
00:25:50.519 --> 00:26:07.640
It's not impossible as a year goes on, but it's best done at the beginning when people are just getting to know each other and before sort of habits form or certain kind of negative interactions start to take hold, you can start to build those connections in the group and kind of create community in your classroom.
00:26:08.039 --> 00:26:12.920
What role do you feel bullying plays within ever in the context of everything too?
00:26:13.080 --> 00:26:20.440
Because you are hearing more and more incidences of suicides that happen because of bullying.
00:26:22.279 --> 00:26:30.519
And also more, even more catastrophic events where people are coming to school with weapons and school shootings and things.
00:26:30.759 --> 00:26:37.560
So I'm just wondering like where, you know, what do you feel like this also plays into the context of everything as well?
00:26:37.799 --> 00:26:49.000
Yeah, I can't think about bullying in 2025 without appreciating the impact that social media and the internet has on that uh and how that plays out.
00:26:49.160 --> 00:26:52.759
Um and I think we're really just trying to understand it.
00:26:52.840 --> 00:27:00.279
I mean, I think, you know, kind of 30 year ago bullying, you know, looked like taking, you know, you could see it.
00:27:00.360 --> 00:27:02.759
Like you could see it in the school, you could understand it.
00:27:02.840 --> 00:27:19.160
You know, I I think it still does, I think the bully still does stem from some kind of insecurity and you and you need to sort of lean into that and try to see where that's coming from, or it's a repetitive thing, or someone's being demeaned somewhere else, and so they're finding the weakest link to take it out on.
00:27:19.320 --> 00:27:35.160
Those are those dynamics haven't changed, but being able to sort of being in a an adult responsible for young people's growth and development, being able to identify when bullying is happening, that's the new frontier to sort of try to understand.
00:27:35.320 --> 00:27:47.000
Um, I think once we see it happening, I think there's enough knowledge for approaching the bully, for addressing the victim, for finding ways there's restorative practices one might use.
00:27:47.080 --> 00:27:49.640
There's a number of different techniques you could think about.
00:27:49.799 --> 00:27:58.680
But I think the the first step is not knowing who's who's the bully and who's being bullied because of what happens in cyberspace.
00:27:58.759 --> 00:28:13.000
And I think we're, you know, at least in New York City, I think right now, the experiment of sort of not allowing internet-enabled devices into the school, with some exceptions, but not allowing them into the school system has been wildly successful.
00:28:13.320 --> 00:28:21.720
All of the fears of, you know, the revolution that students would undertake because they didn't have their devices is really not not manifest at all.
00:28:21.880 --> 00:28:29.799
Really, you know, the feedback from all of the adults is there's much more engagement, there's much more connection with the student to student, with student to teacher.
00:28:29.960 --> 00:28:32.120
Like their sounds in the school are different.
00:28:32.200 --> 00:28:34.039
You're hearing people talking to each other.
00:28:34.200 --> 00:28:43.320
Now, I think again, you would see doesn't mean there aren't going to be, you know, aggressors and victims along the way, perpetrators and victims, but you're gonna be able to see it.
00:28:43.480 --> 00:28:45.400
You're gonna be someone's gonna be able to tell you about it.
00:28:45.560 --> 00:28:48.680
Like when I was in that high school, there were plenty of challenges.
00:28:48.759 --> 00:28:52.120
And so some but someone would come to me and say, you know, they would call me Mr.
00:28:52.200 --> 00:28:52.519
Kevin.
00:28:52.600 --> 00:28:53.240
They would say, Mr.
00:28:53.320 --> 00:28:58.360
Kevin, like I'm worried, you know, this person I think is upset with them and I think they're gonna fight.
00:28:58.519 --> 00:29:01.480
You know, someone's gotta do something because this isn't gonna go well.
00:29:01.720 --> 00:29:04.360
So you could do something because it was out there.
00:29:04.519 --> 00:29:14.039
When it's happening, you know, all in the cyberspace and you just don't know, and these things, you know, have an impact that goes far and wide outside the building, even, right?
00:29:14.120 --> 00:29:16.440
So it's so, so, so challenging.
00:29:16.680 --> 00:29:26.759
So I think, you know, really from a psychoeducation or an education perspective, there's really a lot the school systems need to do to teach about cyberbullying, right?
00:29:26.840 --> 00:29:29.480
To sort of look at what does that mean?
00:29:29.640 --> 00:29:30.360
What does that look like?
00:29:30.519 --> 00:29:31.640
What's the impact of it?
00:29:31.880 --> 00:29:39.799
Get student ambassadors for acts of kindness as opposed to, you know, making comments or again, not having the phones in schools.
00:29:39.960 --> 00:29:42.920
Now no one's videotaping someone in their worst moment.
00:29:43.000 --> 00:29:50.039
You know, you drop your lunch tray in the middle of the lunchroom and you look a mess, and someone's taking a picture and laughing and posting it all over the place.
00:29:50.200 --> 00:29:58.840
Now everybody in the building knows the next time they see you that you and you're an insecure eighth grader, you know, like that hurts and that doesn't go away easily.
00:29:58.920 --> 00:30:01.320
And you probably don't even go home and tell your parents about it.
00:30:01.400 --> 00:30:02.279
You're so embarrassed.
00:30:02.360 --> 00:30:03.560
Like so no one knows.
00:30:03.720 --> 00:30:07.080
And this is stewing on you and developing and growing, and no one knows.
00:30:07.240 --> 00:30:09.000
And that's that's really the hardest thing.
00:30:09.160 --> 00:30:22.360
So, how do we educate ourselves on these mechanisms, on these devices, get the parents, you know, get parents to buy in and be in, you know, be okay with creating limits or figuring out how do we talk about this?
00:30:22.600 --> 00:30:24.200
Got to have more conversation.
00:30:24.360 --> 00:30:26.120
What's going on in your social media?
00:30:26.200 --> 00:30:30.440
Like, you know, the classic question from parent to a child is how was your day?
00:30:30.680 --> 00:30:31.560
What did you learn?
00:30:31.720 --> 00:30:34.440
Are we asking like, what did you post?
00:30:34.600 --> 00:30:36.200
What did someone say about you today?
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