Redefining Good-Behaviour and Engagement: Professor Stephanie Jones
Are we truly promoting self-control or just compliance to adult demands? How can we engage students in deep, effortless, and meaningful learning experiences?
Stephanie M. Jones is the Gerald S. Lesser Professor in Child Development and Education and Director of the EASEL Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Her research, anchored in prevention science, focuses on the effects of poverty and exposure to violence on social, emotional, and behavioral development from early childhood through early adolescence. Over the past fifteen years, her work has centered on evaluation research addressing the impact of preschool- and elementary-level social-emotional learning interventions on behavioral and academic outcomes and classroom practices, as well as new curriculum development, implementation, and testing. Stephanie is also co-Director (with Nonie Lesaux) of the Saul Zaentz Early Education Initiative and Co-PI of the Early Learning Study at Harvard (ELS@H).
She serves on numerous national advisory boards and expert consultant groups related to social-emotional development, early childhood education, and child and family anti-poverty policies, including recently as a member of the Council of Distinguished Scientists for the Aspen National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development. Her research is published in academic and educational journals as well as in trade publications, and she regularly presents her work to national academic and practitioner audiences. Jones holds a Ph.D. from Yale University and a B.A. from Barnard College.
—-
This Season is done in partnership with Salzburg Global Seminar. https://www.salzburgglobal.org/
Please check out our partner’s publication advocating for education transformation: https://www.diplomaticourier.com/issue/transformed-the-case-for-education-transformation
[TRANSCRIPT AUTO-GENERATED]
00:00:06:01 - 00:00:36:09
Louka Parry
Hello friends, and welcome to the Learning Future podcast. Thank you so much for the gift of your attention and time. And it won't be wasted because the conversation you're about to hear is an absolute delight with one of the world's experts in the field of social and emotional learning and development. Her name is Professor Stephanie Jones. She is the Gerald Lesser professor in child development and Education and also the director of the Easel lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in the United States.
00:00:36:11 - 00:01:08:23
Louka Parry
Her research is anchored in prevention science and focuses on the effects of poverty, exposure to violence, on social, emotional, behavioral development from early childhood through to adolescence. She's especially interested in the impact of preschool and elementary level social emotional learning interventions on behavior and academic outcomes in classroom practices and new curriculum development implementation and testing. And that means how do we create the right type of learning environments where young people can develop the skills to self-regulate and learn optimally?
00:01:09:00 - 00:01:39:07
Louka Parry
She serves on numerous advisory boards and consulting groups, including as a member recently, as a member of the Council of Distinguished Scientists for the Aspen National Commission on Social Emotional Academic Development. And her research is published in many, many different journals. She, of course, holds a Ph.D. from Yale University and a B.A. from Barnard College. Really hope you enjoy this conversation with Stefanie Jones, who's one of the most delightful professors I've been lucky to learn alongside.
00:01:39:10 - 00:01:45:13
Louka Parry
My first question what some make your learning and then what's a transformed education to you?
00:01:45:15 - 00:01:56:10
Stephanie Jones
The first my first answer is people should listen. When people ask them why. The first my first answer is people should listen. When people ask them why.
00:01:56:12 - 00:02:24:09
Louka Parry
Yeah, that's like it. It's it's what's something you're learning online. So let's make your learning. And it can be from any domain of your life because yes, even the arrival felt that was so that was really interesting and we just dropped into to that. But but yeah, it can be any any part of life work, education, academia, reflections on the medical sciences, the opportunity, whatever you like.
00:02:24:11 - 00:02:35:02
Stephanie Jones
Okay, So all all throw one down from all the areas. How about that Greg? Because I don't I'm going to just say one thing. I'm learning. I'm going to say three. Maybe that's.
00:02:35:02 - 00:02:36:11
Louka Parry
Fine. Yeah.
00:02:36:13 - 00:03:12:19
Stephanie Jones
So, and, and it might be learning and thinking. So the first thing I'm learning is that I can't remember things. I feel like that experience of those years of the pandemic and I am saying this about myself, but it's something I've been hearing from others. It's something I don't remember. It feels like a big blank spot. And that's not actually true because when I think back to those days, I do remember specific things, both terrifying things and interesting new things I do remember.
00:03:13:00 - 00:03:42:03
Stephanie Jones
But somehow I don't want to remember or the or the whole thing together. Seems like the spot, like a big blank thing. And yeah, and the reason I bring that up is because I suspect and I've heard that others feel the same way, and I don't want that to be the case because the the pandemic revealed so much about what already existed and deepened it in many ways.
00:03:42:03 - 00:04:09:00
Stephanie Jones
And and running over it with a big blank spot feels dangerous to me. So that's one thing I am thinking about. And, you know, in more concrete terms, it's like how do you how do you take a set of really challenging experiences, but also ones that offered innovations and all kinds of other things and then really surface them and face them, face them even though they're hard and use them in ways that are helpful to us.
00:04:09:02 - 00:04:38:21
Stephanie Jones
That's one thing I'm I'm either learning or experiencing or thinking or one of those. It's also feels personal and professional. So another thing that I'm learning and it's in the domain of my work, which is all the the sort of nonacademic side of the house, right? All of the kind of social emotional foundation and some supports for learning in any setting.
00:04:38:21 - 00:04:52:03
Stephanie Jones
But often we put it inside of schools. I've been thinking about how to like a new model. You know me, you know, I like to think about frameworks and those kinds of things.
00:04:52:05 - 00:04:54:06
Louka Parry
But understatement. But yeah.
00:04:54:08 - 00:05:19:11
Stephanie Jones
Right, right. I like to define things and get them organized, even though, as I just showed you with my big long list, it is completely disorganized. So we often say that we often start when we talk about social and emotional learning. In particular, we start by defining the things that we think children should be able to do, the things that they should know and be able to do.
00:05:19:11 - 00:05:56:07
Stephanie Jones
We start with the child at the center of a big, complex ecology, right? And we acknowledge the ecology. And that's really important because all of those settings influence and shape developmental pathways of whatever type. And then we say, but of course relationships and interactions are really foundational to supporting children's skill development in this domain over time. So relationships are really essential, but we don't put them in the center.
00:05:56:09 - 00:05:58:21
Stephanie Jones
So the thing that I'm thinking.
00:05:58:23 - 00:05:59:20
Louka Parry
That's interesting and.
00:05:59:20 - 00:06:27:04
Stephanie Jones
I'm learning is like, how do we and this gets to your question about like education transformed, How do we shift our gaze from from having children and what they can and can't do at the center and invert the model, take what's on the outside and put it in the center and have interactions and relationships and connections be at the center.
00:06:27:04 - 00:07:01:13
Stephanie Jones
And therefore the focus which as we know, if we really emphasize the quality of teaching interactions of developmental relationships, of how adults work together, how kids work together, we know that the skills arrive, right? They come out of that. So one thing I'm learning and thinking is like I'm thinking about how can we can create a model that inverts art that just absolutely inverts every other model.
00:07:01:13 - 00:07:04:21
Stephanie Jones
We have put something else at the middle.
00:07:04:23 - 00:07:26:15
Louka Parry
I like that. I like that a lot. Stephanie The first piece that I think about is the like, the strange quality of the time has had over the last few years. I think it's your first reflection. So, you know, I'm thinking about learning through adversity and I don't know, we might and there's so much talk on resilience and I'd love you to cover this point.
00:07:26:15 - 00:07:47:20
Louka Parry
As you know, as someone that's right at the forefront, you know, and I'm not sure resilience, depending on its definition, is exactly what we want, because it's the resilience to return to our original state as opposed to perhaps an antifragile understanding or a post-traumatic growth orientation, which is there's going to be these global shocks increasingly to our personal and professional lives.
00:07:47:20 - 00:08:22:17
Louka Parry
I mean, it kind of seems like the quality of life is struggle in some ways. And that's where we get growth, even if the struggle is trying to, you know, have some neurogenesis to create a new idea in a young person's brain so that they can write. And the second part about relationships, I would love us to speak more about that, and it's something that our team is talking a lot about and our extended kind of network is how, how might we recreate and education model that then becomes like a new understanding of a learning village or how a school could function in terms of a living ecology.
00:08:22:19 - 00:08:47:16
Louka Parry
So rather than saying, Oh, he's an individual, what do we want them to be able to know by the old model? What do you really think about schools? And then what can they do with what they know? Right? That's fine that it's based on the efficiency paradigm. It's like who might we like them to be in relationship to themselves, each other and the planet, and all of a sudden we've got this relational frame because, you know, what is that?
00:08:47:16 - 00:09:07:04
Louka Parry
What's the old saying? Man is not an island something I think you may know. We're in this like we're all in this together. It's like it's not that we're just a single drop in the ocean. We're also the entire ocean in a single drop. And so really, I think kind of almost spiritual understanding of the the interconnectedness of everything in our entire planet.
00:09:07:08 - 00:09:23:22
Louka Parry
And you get into the quantum realm and we're having the same conversation about entanglement and non-local reality, you know, which are winning Nobel Prizes. So that's kind of curious to me as well about the nature of consciousness itself, you know, and then we go on to that. But yeah, take us into as.
00:09:23:23 - 00:09:28:03
Stephanie Jones
We started, we started here and then we went real big, real quick.
00:09:28:05 - 00:09:30:07
Louka Parry
We're dying to get to Stephanie.
00:09:30:09 - 00:09:34:08
Stephanie Jones
Yes, I know, I know. But it's so thrilling.
00:09:34:10 - 00:09:36:14
Louka Parry
It's thrilling.
00:09:36:16 - 00:10:07:02
Stephanie Jones
Yeah. I have 100 things to say about everything you just said, so I'll just start with one, which is it's related to the starting narrow and going huge. Like when you think about ecological systems theory, the kinds of models that we use to frame up our approach, this one being the ubiquitous kind of Bronfenbrenner ecological systems theory. And we have that, as I was talking about, we have the child at the center and then we have the rings around it.
00:10:07:04 - 00:10:09:10
Louka Parry
Micro meso macro, etc..
00:10:09:12 - 00:10:53:17
Stephanie Jones
So all of them, right? And it's it's been, it's been the most useful way to situate the things we care about in the things that we're often unwilling to accept or acknowledge the role of. Right. So, so it's been such a helpful way of thinking about human development. But like if you, if you look at and I am not this, but I'll talk about it anyway, if you look at how a biologist or like someone who works with biological systems or ecological systems out in the world, like in nature, the picture they give you is not a circle of something at the center with the rings.
00:10:53:19 - 00:11:20:09
Stephanie Jones
It's a whole flat object, right? And it has the different things in it. It's like in the textbook, it's a square, and inside it is the water, the plants, the the creatures who live there. And your gaze is not pointed in one place. Yeah, right. And so and the message is that, you know, touching any part of the ecology affects all other parts and, and it's deeply relational.
00:11:20:09 - 00:11:50:19
Stephanie Jones
And I just, you know, not to obsess about this point too much, but it is about shifting our gaze in some ways away from the places we assume it should go. And and, and finding other centers in the ecology that that we might focus on, which is why I'm talking about like in my domain, nonacademic or social and emotional skills inverting those rings to focus on relationships.
00:11:50:19 - 00:12:18:08
Stephanie Jones
But others might have a different place to put their gaze. So so that kind of ecological view I think has a we have an opportunity to think about it in a new way. Now, and we should. The pandemic gave us an acute sense of how all the systems are so deeply connected to each other and that there isn't just one center of gravity that we should putting be putting our attention to.
00:12:18:08 - 00:12:56:07
Stephanie Jones
So that's one thing that your comment, when we think of you mentioned resilience and of course, these are all related to each other and it made me think that we're having a conversation of ours. So I started with relationships when I about resilience. You're right. It's it's assumed that or it's technically defined as doing well or maintaining despite adversity, exposure to adversity.
00:12:56:07 - 00:13:23:00
Stephanie Jones
And what achieves the balance, the kind of doing well or maintaining is that there are protections and supports on the other side of adversity that sort of equalizes the scales. But but you're right, it's it's the assumption is that we're either going to keep going, keep surviving despite challenge without addressing challenge necessarily, or try to just get back to some sort of original way that maybe it wasn't working so well.
00:13:23:00 - 00:13:44:01
Stephanie Jones
So I agree with you the paradigm of resilience. Maybe we need to rethink it. And I wrote down a couple of words that are kind of like it's like almost like a dimensional approach to these answers or to how we respond to challenge. And we might start with something that's like response. Like, what do we do right then?
00:13:44:03 - 00:13:45:13
Louka Parry
Mm hmm.
00:13:45:15 - 00:14:11:11
Stephanie Jones
Then then how do we build resilience through a response? By building up protection or protective factors in the face of adversity. And that leads us to think like, okay, how do we recover? MM But then what you're saying is if we're going to rethink the paradigm of resilience is like, let's go further to how do we remake or reinvent?
00:14:11:13 - 00:14:39:22
Stephanie Jones
And then I would say, and this came from something I, I that Rob Yeager's who's at Castle wrote a while ago, which is like, how do we go from remake to Resist, right? Which is like we resist the impact of adversity or how do we resist and actively work against the kind of set of structural inequities that make this all happen in the first place?
00:14:39:22 - 00:14:45:24
Stephanie Jones
Like, how are we going to fight just as in the like, fight mode, which I kind of like.
00:14:46:01 - 00:14:57:16
Louka Parry
I like that a lot. And I mean, Stephanie, I love that you just you know, the way your brain works, I've got to be honest. It's like, oh, here we go. Here's a way is a taxonomies model. It's like.
00:14:57:18 - 00:14:59:21
Stephanie Jones
Okay, now we have the six are now.
00:14:59:21 - 00:15:18:13
Louka Parry
The other six out of the end. It's not I, I really love the one I the one I really want to consider is, is your reflection because, you know, often we think about, especially with this transforming education space movement and clearly this is now the global narrative coming from the OECD, the World Bank, World Economic Forum, U.N., etc..
00:15:18:15 - 00:15:40:24
Louka Parry
So I but I wonder about this idea of struggle versus suffering is one thing I'd like us to speak to, because struggle to me seems to be the act of learning in some ways. You know, there needs to be a zone of proximal confusion, you know, as I a flexible challenge, you know, in the Goldilocks zone or proximal development, you know, the Gonski stuff from way back.
00:15:40:24 - 00:16:05:01
Louka Parry
And and then I also wonder about, you know, I think the the impact of user centered design such that I'm going to make your life easier, Stephanie, by making it so easy that you never have to really kind of do anything except press a button from a device that's connected to everything else and is trying to extract your attention as the most valuable commodity of the modern era.
00:16:05:01 - 00:16:32:05
Louka Parry
So, you know, like I'm talking with principals all over the over the world, all over Australia and educators and, you know, as they're saying, this kind of we have this paradox of these really resilient young people that in many ways are not resilient. And this because they they walk the cross-country run, for example, they refuse to run or they, you know, they just don't see the kind of expansive experience of growth because I think they've been so we've all been so captured by this space.
00:16:32:05 - 00:16:55:15
Louka Parry
So I'm curious about that because rather than saying, Oh, well, it's good for you, a spoonful of concrete, you know, but clearly that's not the way because it doesn't build emotional agility on a well being. But then on the other side is this kind of cotton wool approach in which I think also doesn't enable us to strive to become now our greatest possibility for contribution.
00:16:55:17 - 00:17:00:03
Louka Parry
I don't know. There's a lot in that, but I'm these are some of the things that we're considering.
00:17:00:05 - 00:17:05:15
Stephanie Jones
Well, I mean those are interesting words, struggle versus what did you say suffer.
00:17:05:15 - 00:17:12:09
Louka Parry
Suffering as something that is unnecessary and we should bring down. But struggle being a core theme, too, you know.
00:17:12:11 - 00:17:32:18
Stephanie Jones
Right. And I wonder if a way to think about struggle is less a sort of less averse. Mm hmm. And and the word I wrote down was grapple.
00:17:32:20 - 00:17:33:15
Louka Parry
And I.
00:17:33:17 - 00:17:56:14
Stephanie Jones
Sort of where so and we end it. It's kind of like we can think about kids as they're learning something a long or systems as they learn things. I'm trying to get myself out of the kid focused language like and and settings as they learn things. Adults as they learn things that there is there's the things we think we know, right?
00:17:56:14 - 00:18:18:15
Stephanie Jones
That we're we feel comfortable where we have them under our belt there in our toolbox, those kinds of thing things that we are working on. We don't know we are successful and not. And then things that we absolutely cannot do, but we have in our sights. And so it feels like that's a in the middle is the gravel, right?
00:18:18:15 - 00:18:26:03
Stephanie Jones
I'm grappling with something I'm working on something, I'm engaged with it. It is it is pulling me in.
00:18:26:05 - 00:18:28:06
Louka Parry
Yeah, it does.
00:18:28:08 - 00:18:51:06
Stephanie Jones
I'm like, it's it's lined up with what I that's the the Gonski, it's lined up with where I am developmentally with what I am seeking, you know, based on my interest and all of those things that feels like me, like, you know, they say productive struggle. I call that my version of that is grapple. And I actually say it all the time.
00:18:51:06 - 00:19:12:10
Stephanie Jones
I don't know why, but but it's like, what are you grappling with? And it's doesn't have to be it didn't have to be negative right? It's like I'm tangling with this thing. So I hear you on that. We may have set up ways of learning or ways of interacting or systems of engagement that are not engaging.
00:19:12:12 - 00:19:13:06
Louka Parry
Right.
00:19:13:08 - 00:19:33:08
Stephanie Jones
Or that pull that create a set of skills that don't require some of this, maybe more, I don't know, foundational, more tactile grappling. And I don't know how learning happens without it.
00:19:33:10 - 00:20:16:18
Louka Parry
I don't think it well, I don't think it does. I think, you know, this idea of grappling and then understanding the relationships between constructs, ideas or even the relationships between neurons, synaptic, you know, I just think that so I love the idea of grappling because it is tactile. You're right. And I wonder, Stephanie, if we've just been asking ourselves in these ecologies, these learning ecologies to be grappling with the wrong things, which is, you know, for example, compliance, you have to grapple with sitting still as a young child where you're not actually designed for by a psychosocial, you know, to do that, you know, But no, sit still and listen and you have to grapple
00:20:16:23 - 00:20:19:05
Louka Parry
with this really kind of self-regulation.
00:20:19:07 - 00:20:20:11
Stephanie Jones
But right.
00:20:20:13 - 00:20:24:00
Louka Parry
Without any kind of tools of it.
00:20:24:02 - 00:20:51:17
Stephanie Jones
Right. And so so that's a great example. That's a really good example of some of the misfires. Right. That that what we really want is for a child to be engaged in the learning task, whatever it is, can be listening to something someone is reading. It could be sitting. I mean, all of this with this idea that they're sitting right, sitting and doing an activity at at a desk or whatever it is, doesn't matter.
00:20:51:22 - 00:21:17:11
Stephanie Jones
Yeah. And we the adults, we want that to happen. And we think that the child, let's say the seven year old is sitting there for that 30 minutes struggling with the reading comprehension or the math problem. What they're struggling with is sitting there for 30 minutes. Right. Like we've confused conflated them.
00:21:17:13 - 00:21:18:12
Louka Parry
Yeah, right.
00:21:18:14 - 00:21:52:24
Stephanie Jones
And so our goal is to is the sit and the learn rather than the or maybe our task or what we're tasked with is to get kid to sit and learn this thing rather than engage the child in something that will pull their mind and pull them into the learning. And and we confuse what we see as a result is like either, you know, disengagement, lack of effort, lack of capacity, when in fact it's just a completely misaligned task for that child.
00:21:53:01 - 00:22:26:08
Stephanie Jones
Yeah, that's what happens in the domain. Like my my world of social and emotional learning and related endeavors is like we get confused on implementation and interaction about the terms. Right? We we think we're we're working toward self-control, but what we're working on is compliance to adult demands, which, I mean, I guess your listeners can't see me grit my teeth and gasp, but that's what I did.
00:22:26:10 - 00:22:50:04
Louka Parry
It's such a great that's a great piece to this. And then and so we are in some way and then we can flight the resilience building from that, which is to say, See, well, well done, and we reward the compliance. And then of course it's not, it's not actually the learning task itself. I've been reading a lot about flow theory, you know, Stephanie, which she would know a lot about.
00:22:50:04 - 00:23:18:00
Louka Parry
And I really think, you know, this idea that what we're talking about is the grappling that that kind of in some ways, you know, lures us into this flow state, which is our entire being is focused intensely on this task such that it becomes, you know, one of the acronyms from Steven Cutler and Jamie Weil is, you know, stern, selfless, timeless, effortless and filled with richness, this really wonderful drop in.
00:23:18:05 - 00:23:42:12
Louka Parry
But I'd love I'd love some of your reflections on this space because I really think and the correlations here so clear between the amount of flow, even micro flow that you experience in your day or in your life and your overall satisfaction level of your life, because you have a sense of momentum or purpose. And some of the conversation we were talking about before going to air, you know, this idea of being present, you're so in it.
00:23:42:15 - 00:23:51:18
Louka Parry
You're in your life in your body. And I want to I want to ask you some questions about embodiment as well in the body mind linked because I'm interested about that is all we might have to do a second part.
00:23:51:20 - 00:24:09:15
Stephanie Jones
Oh, you're so in it. You don't even know you're in it. But you're in it. But you do know, right? That's the that's the flow thing which you like your I mean, I don't know as much about it as you suggest I do, but I have a sense, which is like, you're in it, but you are you aren't aware and you are hyper aware, Right.
00:24:09:15 - 00:24:22:16
Stephanie Jones
You're and that's the third thing. I hadn't heard that acronym. And it's super interesting. And I wanted to pause on Effortless because it's effortful right?
00:24:22:17 - 00:24:25:11
Louka Parry
Effortless effort. They say, Yeah.
00:24:25:13 - 00:25:00:20
Stephanie Jones
It's deeply engaged and you are both consciously aware of that engagement and unconscious of the effort, I think. I mean, that's like the state of it. I just, I just return to this idea that children and adults learn when engaged in things that are interesting to them. And that seems like a very overly simplified kind of way of talking about it.
00:25:00:20 - 00:25:22:16
Stephanie Jones
But it is it's hard to get away from that. You know, we are human. We are human. We are social and human beings. And the things that interest us pull us in, it pulls us into the learning and it pulls us into that state of being engaged. If it's at the right level and in the place that makes sense.
00:25:22:16 - 00:25:53:20
Stephanie Jones
And all those conditions are there, which are not many. So what what are kids interested in and how do we engage them around the mechanics of the stuff that we need them to know using things that they are drawn to? And that I don't think means like the simple answer of video games or whatever, right? Kids are interested in in screens.
00:25:53:20 - 00:26:03:09
Stephanie Jones
It means, you know, big questions, big ideas, big interesting topics.
00:26:03:11 - 00:26:30:22
Louka Parry
You know, it's like a ha. Stephanie Is that the example of I think it was Veronica Buck's Manzella that I heard it from actually a feature running institute. But two years ago. HTC but the the idea that you know, everyone's in the classroom, something is happening outside the window and someone's looking outside the window and then the educator hard working well-intentioned says it's can you pay attention to the learning?
00:26:30:24 - 00:26:50:10
Louka Parry
And of course what's going on outside the window could be like the most fascinating thing. And this is kind of, I think, how we have in within the system that we've inherited, frankly, it's a legacy system and there are components of it that are palliative and there are some parts of it that are deeply human and powerful and effortful.
00:26:50:12 - 00:27:13:21
Louka Parry
And I just I wonder about your your hours before it's like we need to rethink and then remake and in some ways then resist. And I see the greatest impacts that I see are coming from from leaders who are so courageous that they say, Well, I'm going actually I'm going to resist that system because I believe in this, this and this.
00:27:13:21 - 00:27:25:04
Louka Parry
And here's why. And that that stance, I think, really creates you know, it creates a case for what's what matters most right now.
00:27:25:04 - 00:27:25:18
Stephanie Jones
Yeah.
00:27:25:20 - 00:27:46:16
Louka Parry
You know, and this is the whole the whole piece that you're leading globally, if I might say, on the social and emotional aspects, developments, you know, competencies, however we frame them of learning and coupling those to the academics. I mean, we're seeing this. It's still bifurcated, which is insane. You know, when you look at the affective neurosciences, I mean, it's so interesting.
00:27:46:16 - 00:27:50:20
Louka Parry
It's like, oh, well, what you.
00:27:50:22 - 00:27:52:15
Stephanie Jones
Just write in that one place.
00:27:52:15 - 00:28:25:05
Louka Parry
But it's yeah, it's so interesting and, and yet the need to kind of separate social and emotional is in, I think, a vehicle to be able to elevate it. So then to reconnect it to the cognitive I mean, I would love you to talk a little bit about how you see this unfolding in the coming years. You know, because as someone that's looking a lot at futures, we say, well, someone born while we have this conversation finishing high school, if there are high schools in 2040 and they're like, oh, well, that's kind of like, I don't know, I got so thank God.
00:28:25:07 - 00:28:31:00
Louka Parry
How do you see this future playing out from your desire, you know, perspective?
00:28:31:02 - 00:28:59:24
Stephanie Jones
The I mean, I don't know, we're in a a confusing time when, you know, at least in the U.S. and I'm certain this is the case in other places around the globe, there is a lot of documenting the things that were lost and the gaps that have emerged, pandemic related and that's going to, you know, push and pull in one direction or another.
00:29:00:01 - 00:29:38:08
Stephanie Jones
And and I guess one fear I have is that we will will ignore what I talked about at the beginning, which is that blank space at our peril. So the blank space is not simply missed learning opportunities, the opportunity to learn algebraic functions, the the the blank spaces is I think it's blank for all of us because we lost social interaction and lost social connection in some ways and gained it in others.
00:29:38:08 - 00:30:15:19
Stephanie Jones
But but the lost concept is prevails, I think. And I think that creates blankness. And so if we respond by not intensively focusing on rebuilding social connection, social interaction, and social relationships, we're going to we're going to we're going to miss the mark. Right. So and and I, I think that I hear that I say and I hear myself saying a lot, but I don't think that I hear it enough.
00:30:15:21 - 00:30:59:23
Stephanie Jones
And I worry that we are we're going to jump to intensive make up formulation for learning things like acquiring specific skills as opposed to, you know, building deeper forms of knowledge and, you know, really incorporating and understanding things. So I'm saying this in a kind of confusing way. I just because I don't want to say ignore all of these really present and important sort of gaps in acquiring certain kinds of skills.
00:31:00:00 - 00:31:35:05
Stephanie Jones
I don't think we should ignore that, but I don't think that the pathway to it is necessarily the one that I hear people taking all the time. I think the pathway to it is through rebuilding relationships by intent, civilly recovering some of that blank space for kids and engaging them in those things. When you talk to kids the things they love to talk about and adults, I would say, are their emotions, their brain, their relationships with other people, the interactions they have, like their encounters with the world.
00:31:35:05 - 00:31:46:14
Stephanie Jones
That's what they want to talk about. So let's talk about that and then find our way to those specific skills, which we will find our way to.
00:31:46:16 - 00:32:10:24
Louka Parry
MM I love that word encounter, in particular an encounter with the world in some ways an encounter with your being into encountering the world itself, you know, so that in turn and into relationships, that I think is a beautiful way to finish. I mean, I've got so many more good that I know we could talk for days and we will one day.
00:32:11:01 - 00:32:29:20
Louka Parry
But this idea of relationships is key and and all the pieces around the ecology. I love this other frame that I'm taking from this conversation, which is how do we shift our gaze instead of just be like, Oh, well, how are we doing? Student well-being? It's actually how we considering that as a feature of this living ecosystem at whatever level.
00:32:29:22 - 00:32:45:03
Louka Parry
And, you know, yes, that's a piece. My final question to you is what's your take home message? There's something to leave us marinating on, encountering in our own way. What would you say it is?
00:32:45:05 - 00:33:07:12
Stephanie Jones
I mean, this is this is so simple, but it's really like, don't give up. We got to keep at it. And having conversations like this is invigorating. So find your invigorating conversation. If you need help Keeping going with the hard work you feel down about what's happening in the world. Find the invigorating conversation and it'll help you keep going.
00:33:07:14 - 00:33:25:04
Louka Parry
It's beautiful. Professor Stefanie Jones, thank you so much for your time on the benefits podcast and just for being a wonderful human being. I continue to learn so much from you over time and I look forward to future conversations as well. Keep going. All the best.
00:33:25:06 - 00:33:25:19
Stephanie Jones
Thank you.