Compassion in Learning: Ryder Delaloye
In an environment of rapid academic and technological achievement; what are the potential long-term impacts on individual well-being and societal development should social-emotional learning no be effectively incorporated into our educational systems? What can we do to balance and serve broad diverse requirements of young learners?
Ryder Delaloye is the Associate Director for SEE Learning® (Social, Emotional, and Ethical Learning) Program at the Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-based Ethics which is located within Emory University. He is a practitioner of education and learning, his experience as a teacher and administrator spans from 2nd grade through graduate school. He has taught in public and private schools and universities both domestically and internationally.
Prior to his role as the Associate Director of SEE Learning, his research and school engagement focused on whole school and district transformation, district leadership, social studies education, sustainability education, civic education, and teacher and administrator social emotional learning. Ryder believes that education is a vehicle for interpersonal growth and societal change. He is grounded by his wife and children; with whom he loves to play and go on adventures in the mountains. He received his Doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Montana.
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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
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[TRANSCRIPT AUTO-GENERATED]
00:00:07:00 - 00:00:35:10
Louka Parry
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Learning Future podcast. I'm your host. Louka Parry and gosh, it's going to be a delightful conversation ahead because today we are speaking with Ryder Delaloye. He is the associate director for SEE Learning and SEE stands for Social, Emotional and Ethical Learning. And it's a program at the Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion based Ethics, which is located within Emory University in the United States, as you will see, he's a practitioner of education and learning.
00:00:35:12 - 00:00:59:19
Louka Parry
He has a whole raft of experience as a teacher and administrator all the way from second grade to graduate school. Having taught in public and private schools and universities across the United States and also around the world. Prior to the role as associate director of SEE Learning, his research and school engagement focused on whole school and district transformation, leadership, social studies, education, sustainability, civics and social emotional learning.
00:00:59:21 - 00:01:21:02
Louka Parry
Ryder believes that education is a vehicle for interspersonal, growth and societal change, and he is grounded, I think, in a good way by his wife and children with whom he loves to play and go on adventures in the mountains, including climbing adventures. I was just hearing about RADA. He received his doctorate in curriculum instruction from the University of Montana. Ryder,
00:01:21:02 - 00:01:24:21
Louka Parry
It's wonderful to see you again. Thank you for joining us for this podcast.
00:01:24:23 - 00:01:29:08
Ryder Delaloye
Thank you very much. It's a great privilege and honor to be with you. Thank you.
00:01:29:10 - 00:01:45:00
Louka Parry
Mae, I'm very much looking forward to where this is going to go. As you know, our conversations are really emergent. We start with one grounding question, which is what is something that you have been learning recently that's come into your field of awareness?
00:01:45:02 - 00:02:12:24
Ryder Delaloye
Yeah, that's a good, good question. I guess I want to lead with that with, you know, as you share my bio, I mean, it's all true, but it feels a little hyped up. So I guess I want to kind of qualify that, maybe preface this whole thing with I'm not an expert in anything other than maybe making mistakes.
00:02:13:01 - 00:02:45:24
Ryder Delaloye
I'm pretty good at that, and I've done pretty well by myself on that basis. But maybe one thing to substantiate myself is I'm pretty hungry and and I'm pretty driven, but not not in the kind of convention or ways of reputation or status or anything of that nature. I just I really believe there is something underlying the need to grow, the need to kind of question much of what we are experiencing.
00:02:46:01 - 00:03:16:11
Ryder Delaloye
And so, yeah, I find myself through life circumstance in this role at the Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion based Ethics, which is a mouthful, but it really holds all of those elements. I mean, at the center at Emory, we engage in contemplative tradition, you know, thousand years old, contemplative tradition, and we align that with best practices in terms of both research and evidence based practices.
00:03:16:13 - 00:03:44:02
Ryder Delaloye
So we're looking at science and we're substantiating many of the claims that we know inside ourselves and have been established through these ancient wisdom traditions, which is palatable for many in the outside world. Here I was, you know, an engaged, maybe charismatic, but not a master educator by any measure. And and now I'm here in this role. So the question that you ask, which is, you know, what have you been learning?
00:03:44:04 - 00:04:05:12
Ryder Delaloye
I've been taking it seriously because I wasn't raised up academia in this area. And so I remember at a symposium last year, I went to the people that were raised up academia and I said, What's your top ten, top ten list of books that I should be reading? Because I felt like I needed an education in the field of compassion, science and contemplative science.
00:04:05:12 - 00:04:39:02
Ryder Delaloye
And yeah, know, so I took it pretty seriously. And over the last year, I've really dug in one reading that I'm engaging in right now is really looking at this the intersection of trauma and well-being and recognizing that part of what's spurring this is, is I also read an article recently about chronic absenteeism and how prevalent instance of it has only accelerated by like 67% since the pandemic.
00:04:39:04 - 00:05:12:01
Ryder Delaloye
And the way that we define chronic absenteeism in the states is 10%. So if you have a school year that lasts 180 days and you're absent 10% or more, that's 18 days. That's chronic absenteeism is the federal definition, right? When you think about the implications of that, has a learning on relationship and on engagement, it's significant, right? So one of the things this article dug into was this idea of we need to promote relationships, We need to create a sense of belonging, we need to have a feeling of purpose.
00:05:12:03 - 00:05:37:22
Ryder Delaloye
So I don't think schools, for the most part, have a strong command of what that looks like. And so, you know, there feels to be this this, this window of opportunity as we're learning this, as we're engaging with it, that compassion science is as a vehicle by which we can cultivate relationship. And I'll I'll add this other piece and then I'll turn it over to you for some kind of thoughts within that.
00:05:37:24 - 00:05:38:11
Louka Parry
Yeah.
00:05:38:13 - 00:06:06:00
Ryder Delaloye
There's another book I've been digging into called The Good Life and the Good Life is about the Harvard Adult Development Study. And this development study spans 80 years and it looks at factors of well-being. So every year they do an extensive multiple hour survey. Every second year of they do health screenings, very, very rigorous health screenings. The third year they do in-person interviews.
00:06:06:02 - 00:06:31:11
Ryder Delaloye
Not only do they have the original thousand plus participants, but now because it's in its third generation family members and so forth and so on, there are also longitudinal studies on adult development or human happiness, human well-being studies in New Zealand, studies in Europe, studies so forth. And resoundingly, the conclusion of all of these studies with the huge array of data is that when they ask the question, what is the good life?
00:06:31:13 - 00:07:05:09
Ryder Delaloye
What is human flourishing and what is well-being? They continually come back to relationship. That relationship is the strongest determining factor amongst class, amongst health, amongst wealth, amongst race, amongst all of it relationship. The ability to cultivate positive relationships leads to human flourishing. I'm talking longevity, right? People that live longer, which is something we all want. If you come back to compassion science and you think about the implications of that, life sucks.
00:07:05:11 - 00:07:30:14
Ryder Delaloye
You are constantly being thrown things that cause you to be put on your ass. It's hard, it's difficult, it's uncomfortable. And there are a array of issues that continually undermine your well-being. The skill set of relationship is compassion. It's the ability to lean in when people need help as opposed to push away. It's the ability to a tune and to have empathetic concern as opposed to an ego response.
00:07:30:16 - 00:07:57:23
Ryder Delaloye
Your capacity for relationship, your capacity to expand your circle of concern is human flourishing. And if we can, in teachers and students in compassion studies compassion science as a skillset, I think we can alleviate those issues of chronic absenteeism. I think we can alleviate those those significant deterrents that we're facing in our school setting. So because that's what I've been thinking about recently
00:07:57:23 - 00:08:27:23
Louka Parry
Fantastic clearly committed to having data that it's there's so much that we can talk through that. Let's start with compassion science, because I would say that many people listening understand what compassion is, but haven't got a background, as you do in the scientific exploration of what might be that emotional, that action. And so just just take us into that world somewhat, because I think the thing that I'm so fascinated by is the synthesis between, let's say, crudely, the East and the West and traditions.
00:08:27:23 - 00:08:56:04
Louka Parry
For example, no modern psychological study, positive psychology movement that Seligman, you know, popularized, etc.. But then beyond that kind of the well-being science field and of course well-being in my journeys and travels is such a critical component of, of educational leader thinking at the moment. It always has been. But of course post COVID and everything else, absenteeism, be it mental health, social cohesion, be it the age of anxiety.
00:08:56:04 - 00:09:13:05
Louka Parry
I mean, there's so many interesting aspects there. So give us a bit of a rundown on compassion science. Just, you know, what do you mean by that? What do we know categorically through some of the studies are of benefit towards longevity. And by the way, big fan of the good life in the work of the you know, the study.
00:09:13:05 - 00:09:24:00
Louka Parry
I remember watching the TED talk. We share it through our work. You know, like the quality of our relationship, the call of being, you know, that being such a critical component of a great school, a great classroom.
00:09:24:02 - 00:09:25:22
Ryder Delaloye
Yeah, a happy person.
00:09:25:24 - 00:09:26:04
Louka Parry
Happy.
00:09:26:07 - 00:09:50:17
Ryder Delaloye
So the again, I want to qualify just a little bit. You know, I there are colleagues in my midst that that do this work that engage in this research. I just want to preface my response with that. The area of compassion science. Let me hold a little space for the emergence of the field and then we'll get into some of the specifics.
00:09:50:17 - 00:10:01:14
Ryder Delaloye
But this is not a one off in the context of Emory University. We have compassion science in so many areas. Harvard, Yale, Stanford.
00:10:01:14 - 00:10:23:00
Ryder Delaloye
So within compassion science, we are starting to see the emergence of centers and Harvard and Yale University of Virginia with their contemplative science center, the Center for Healthy Minds, out of the University of Wisconsin. We're recognizing more and more are coming up.
00:10:23:00 - 00:10:32:19
Ryder Delaloye
So within the compassion science piece, what we see is a relationship between resilience and compassion.
00:10:32:21 - 00:10:56:21
Ryder Delaloye
So one of the assumptions that are made here, first and foremost is that human beings are pro-social, and they're pro-social largely from an evolutionary standpoint, that they have been designed and have developed in such a way that leads to their flourishing by social interactions, positive social interactions. And so one of the things that underpins compassion science is evolutionary biology.
00:10:56:23 - 00:11:32:08
Ryder Delaloye
So really looking at the traits dispositions and acknowledging that it's not survival of the fittest, it is survival of the kindness, right? These pro-social connections lead to reciprocity, right? So one of the researchers that we draw from is a primatologist from Emory University. His name is Frans de Waal, and he looks at reciprocal relationships. So in 7000 instances of grooming behavior with bonobos, what was observed was the high likelihood of food sharing events as a result of that.
00:11:32:10 - 00:12:00:23
Ryder Delaloye
So the bonobos that groomed each other shared food with each other, and that kind of makes sense, right? We have reciprocity from there. One of the things that has been contributed on the part of what we called an and lambda tradition, which is a tradition, the Indo Tibetan Buddhist tradition that looks at we can use our rational minds, we can use our evolutionary heritage of the prefrontal cortex to now extend our circle of concern.
00:12:00:23 - 00:12:13:20
Ryder Delaloye
So instead of just the bonobo that grooms us, that we. But it could be others, right? So there's a fascinating study done with Manchester United fans. I think this is really important to show.
00:12:13:22 - 00:12:16:20
Louka Parry
Interesting. yeah. I'm sure some fans are listening.
00:12:16:22 - 00:12:44:04
Ryder Delaloye
Yeah. Or could really agitate and disregulated people sort of however the shakes out. I apologize, nevertheless. So they bring together some Manchester United fans and they set the stage for them to be primed to be a manchester United fan. Right? You love Manchester. I love Manchester. Go Manchester. They say, can you please finish the rest of the survey, walk across campus and complete it as they walk across campus.
00:12:44:04 - 00:13:00:02
Ryder Delaloye
Having been primed as a manchester United fan, they see a person who needs help and that person happens to be wearing a manchester Jersey 92% of the time. They help them out because they're there by in-group. You know, that's my person. We bleed blood, the red blood together, right?
00:13:00:04 - 00:13:00:17
Louka Parry
Yes.
00:13:00:17 - 00:13:21:07
Ryder Delaloye
And so second person comes in. They are primed equally as a manchester fan. And they walk across campus. This time they see a person needing help but are wearing a Liverpool jersey. bit of a problem on that one, right? They're not even human. They're subhuman. I'm not going to help you 30% of the time. Do they help out the Liverpool fan?
00:13:21:08 - 00:13:22:12
Louka Parry
Interesting.
00:13:22:14 - 00:13:45:08
Ryder Delaloye
Third person comes in equally Manchester fan equally primed, walks across campus, sees a person with no jersey, and again, only 30% of the time do they help them out. Okay, we know that it makes sense. We have in-group bias, we have in-group association, we have caring compassion responses. Redo the study new people equally. Manchester fans bring person in.
00:13:45:10 - 00:14:08:03
Ryder Delaloye
But instead of priming them to be a manchester fan, we primed them to be a fan of football. The great sporting sport that unifies this sport, that brings us together. Same protocol. Walk across campus, see a person who needs help wearing a manchester jersey. This time they help them out 80% of the time, little less. Right? So they're not as biased in that way, but they stick out more times than not.
00:14:08:05 - 00:14:19:14
Ryder Delaloye
Second person comes in primed to be a lover of football, but they're a manchester fan. When they walk by the Liverpool fan, this time they help them out 70% of the time.
00:14:19:16 - 00:14:21:01
Louka Parry
my gosh.
00:14:21:03 - 00:14:44:14
Ryder Delaloye
When the stats in any person and they're primed to be a football fan, they walk past an unbranded jersey, they only help them out 22% of the time. What has not happened with these individuals is eight weeks of cognitively based compassion training. What has not happened, which is our compassion training program for adults. What has not happened is years of contemplative practice.
00:14:44:14 - 00:15:17:07
Ryder Delaloye
What has not happened is, you know, being a part of the, you know, the adult development studies, what has happened is priming to extend the in-group association, to shift the bias from being a fan of Manchester to being a fan of football. That study alone conveys that we are compassionate and prosocial. What we need in order to achieve that, though, is it's very difficult to be compassionate prosocial when you're disregulated.
00:15:17:08 - 00:15:33:18
Ryder Delaloye
It's very difficult to be compassionate, prosocial when you don't have compassion for yourself. And so we recognize that the preceding causes for compassion for others is resiliency strategies. And I'll highlight one and then I'll turn it back over to you for a thought.
00:15:33:19 - 00:15:35:24
Louka Parry
That's great. Yeah, I'm loving this Ryder, really good.
00:15:36:05 - 00:15:58:23
Ryder Delaloye
So there was an app that was created, Richard Davidson, The University of Wisconsin references this often in his work in that app. There were two questions that populated. One that said, Are you paying attention? And the second one that said, Sorry. The first question for me was What are you doing? And the second question was, are you paying attention?
00:15:58:23 - 00:16:08:04
Ryder Delaloye
This app would populate these two questions throughout the day. What they found was, is that 47% of the time people were not present with what they were doing. In and of itself.
00:16:09:15 - 00:16:35:22
Ryder Delaloye
it kind of makes sense, right? It's not really that problematic. Mind wandering is a good thing. It leads to creativity, it leads to all these other great things. But the one problem of mind wandering that is consequential is that it leads us down one of our other very strong evolutionary traits, which is negativity bias. So we have a tendency to ruminate about the things we can't control or the things we can't change.
00:16:35:22 - 00:17:02:08
Ryder Delaloye
So a future that is outside of our control or a past that we can't change and we amplify, that we exaggerated, we create something that isn't valid, and then we ruminate upon that. That trait undermines our well-being, erodes our resilience, and causes us not to be capable of reciprocating compassion or engaging in compassion responses, whereas we know that that is our human flourishing.
00:17:02:08 - 00:17:28:04
Ryder Delaloye
So those two pieces for me would be a brief summary of resilience and compassion. I'll end with this, which is compassion is not a vestige. It's not a pithy quote that exists on a wall. The way that we define compassion at the center is the desire, the ability to alleviate the suffering of others with tenderness and care. Those require certain skill sets.
00:17:28:06 - 00:17:55:10
Ryder Delaloye
It requires skill sets of expanding our circle of concern. It requires skill sets of engaging critically, because handing that $20 bill to, you know, the drug addict may not be a compassionate response. So we need systems thinking and discernment. We also need the ability to have our nervous system regulation so that we are capable of doing that. So the compassion science is a holistic approach to human well-being and essentially human flourishing.
00:17:55:12 - 00:18:28:23
Louka Parry
Right? So interesting. man, that is the study on the football, the priming. I mean, I just I have a bunch of questions that I want to tap into. What one reflection is that this priming piece is so critical for our work in education, in schools, even positive priming, right? Where we can get a collective moment of levity before we launch into something and how that can unlock creativity, for example, within a group or to create the in-group themselves, you know, hence to expand that in-group to be humanity, right?
00:18:29:00 - 00:18:53:18
Louka Parry
Or the community or the whole school community as opposed to, my, you know, and that piece I'm really interested in a couple of things. One is in regulation. You talked about disregulation. I want you to take us into, like, I don't know, psycho physiological coherence, whatever I have talked about, right? About how do you know when you're regulated?
00:18:53:18 - 00:19:16:16
Louka Parry
Because I think anyone listening to this podcast would be, you know, one of the great challenges is to stay regulated in a world that is screaming at you for your attention consistently. Yeah. And of course, has that if it bleeds, it leads negativity, bias baked into media, you know, constantly triggering like our our fear based response. So I better have a look at that.
00:19:16:21 - 00:19:52:16
Louka Parry
You know. So I wonder about that. And and the other question I have is, kind of about the self-compassion piece. I think when you you know, a lot of the schools that we work alongside, these amazing educators just talk about just the sheer pressure that that young people feel and often place on themselves to be perfect or, you know, in a world where it's all about being augmented now cognitively through machine learning and AI, but also esthetically through Instagram, you know, any kind of photo sharing application cloud + AI, a whole thing.
00:19:52:18 - 00:20:08:10
Louka Parry
So I wonder about those two pieces, one on regulation and the second on self-compassion and what kind of models of what you've seen and you know, what really works to build that resilience? because I know that every single learning setting is kind of asking themselves these questions as well.
00:20:08:12 - 00:20:44:16
Ryder Delaloye
Yeah, no, thank you. Those are both really important questions regarding self-regulation our ability to read are sensory responses is one of the key pieces of this. So almost cultivating an early warning system so that we interface with the world, we interface with ourselves, we have these gives, you know, just as though we were playing poker, you know, and and some of those games are, I feel a tension in my chest.
00:20:44:16 - 00:21:10:23
Ryder Delaloye
When I feel anxiety, I can feel the constriction almost. That's me responding. And that's a sensory perception. One of the things that we can start to do is we train in this, but we're not doing is, you know, breathwork is really important and I completely support that and promote it. So and yet what we're also doing is cultivating a deeper understanding of the relationships between sensations, feelings and emotions, right?
00:21:11:00 - 00:21:40:09
Ryder Delaloye
Oftentimes it's the emotional resile that occurs, and we've completely missed those sensory experiences, the feeling, perceptions, and we're just caught into that anger response. So an example of that is we're driving down the road and somebody cuts us off and and it scares us, terrifies us, right? Because we're about to die. And so, you know, we have a physiological sensory response to that, right?
00:21:40:14 - 00:22:05:05
Ryder Delaloye
We move into kind of an amygdala response of, you know, fight flight, a fright mode, right? We freeze up or we activate, our heart starts to increase. It's pulses, right? So that it can distribute blood throughout the body, the body, then the muscles tense up So it's activated. It's ready to respond, the eyes dilate. You know, all of these sugar is is glucose is surging through the contents.
00:22:05:05 - 00:22:05:17
Louka Parry
Of the system.
00:22:05:17 - 00:22:33:16
Ryder Delaloye
Digestion stops and we're ready to go. All of this is happening, yet we're not even aware of it. All we do is within a moment curse and scream and punch the accelerator. Now, the the ability for us to attuned to the sensations arising in those stress responses can create the gap that is so critical for ethical discernment, and that is between the stimulus and the response.
00:22:33:18 - 00:22:38:08
Ryder Delaloye
It's in that space that we have agency and Victor Frankel, you know, one of the fathers of
00:22:38:13 - 00:22:39:22
Louka Parry
love, this.
00:22:39:24 - 00:23:11:17
Ryder Delaloye
Psychotherapy, psychology, psychiatry really highlights that. So this doesn't have to be just an Eastern tradition. Peaks Right. We know this. The greatest mistakes we've made in our life is when we lack that ability to have space or control between the stimulus and the response. The same thing arises in that situation where we get cut off if we're not in control of our body sensations, of our feelings, and thus our emotions, it will lead us to behaviors that is maladaptive and antithetical to compassion.
00:23:11:19 - 00:23:46:05
Ryder Delaloye
For example, we punch the accelerator. Now when we punch that accelerator, we neglect the fact that we're we may have passengers in the car. We neglect the fact that there are others on the road. We neglect all of these things and we end up causing harm to ourselves and others. Whereas if we can cultivate sensory response, we can take a beat, we can regulate our nervous system through different strategies, and then we can employ the most significant muscle of our body, our rational thinking, and reappraise the situation.
00:23:46:07 - 00:24:14:04
Ryder Delaloye
Whether it's true or not. We could tell ourselves, that person may be having the worst day of their life. That person may be late to their wife's pregnancy, or how giving birth, you know, that person may have all these other things, thus shifting our relationship with the experience and creating a compassion response within non harm right? So the ethic of not hard is compassion in itself, and it brings it back around to the full size and scope, but it relies on common humanity, right?
00:24:14:04 - 00:24:36:01
Ryder Delaloye
Expanding our circle of concern. It relies on these tools. So that would be nervous system regulation. Now, coming to your question regarding self-compassion, I want to qualify something before I respond to that, which is in the field of education. We have a lot of people that are incredibly compassionate to their students and to others, and they give so much.
00:24:36:03 - 00:24:52:24
Ryder Delaloye
And so I don't want to present it as though compassion, self-compassion is reliant or causal to compassion for others, because we've seen instances of incredible acts of compassion for others and then really vicious lack of self compassion and.
00:24:52:24 - 00:24:54:24
Louka Parry
self judgment. Yeah, Yes, right.
00:24:55:00 - 00:25:18:11
Ryder Delaloye
Of criticism and so forth. But yet they give everything. The problem is that without the cultivation of self-compassion, that leads to another significant phenomena that is just gutting education around the world and that is burnout. Right? So one of the things that arises in the practice of compassion is this there's an entry point into compassion responses, which is empathy.
00:25:18:13 - 00:25:40:14
Ryder Delaloye
So empathy activates in the part of the brain that is very similar to pain. So when you're a student or when your partner or when your dog feels pain, you feel pain. The ability to cultivate compassion shifts that towards an aspirational and engaged or motivational basis. So it arises on a cognitive. There's three aspects of compassion: cognitive, aspirational and motivational.
00:25:40:16 - 00:26:11:12
Ryder Delaloye
When that happens, it can much more easily be sustained in indefinitely. Whereas one of the things that's very important in the practice of and the cultivation of self-compassion, which you brought up a key thing that I've actually confronted directly in my own life with my own kids and observing. It's this idea of, you know, body image, right? These false perceptions of Instagram and what Instagram holds? and the fact that those aren't even real people or real things, you know, it is complete construct.
00:26:11:14 - 00:26:31:17
Ryder Delaloye
I was in Colombia and and I was in this small rural village and we were looking at this bulletin board of SEE learning, social, emotional, ethical learning because we were looking at what they were doing in terms of their programing. And the kids respond in these little posters of what is happiness for them? And I remember looking at it because they're kind of layered on top of each other.
00:26:31:17 - 00:26:54:12
Ryder Delaloye
There was not enough board space and there were tons of kids responding to this. There was a picture of a girl, a shapely girl, looking at herself in the mirror in her underwear, and I was like, What is that doing here? And it was this through me. I was like, What's going on there? And when I read it, which was my minimal Spanish, I was able to read this girl wrote because of self-compassion and SEE learning.
00:26:54:12 - 00:27:18:03
Ryder Delaloye
I know have the tools to love myself as I am. And I was like, ´´holy crap´´, that's it. You know? I mean, for some girl in a very ´´machismo´´ culture of Colombia, where, you know, in kids in Euros, when girls turn 15, it's now becoming common practice to get a bunch job. This group was able to see herself as she was by priming these tools of self appraisal.
00:27:18:03 - 00:27:49:11
Ryder Delaloye
So, you know, recognizing certain strategies of analytical, contemplative practice within self-compassion, such as human beings make mistakes. That's what human beings do, right? So you can hold that. Or mistakes are a pathway for learning and growth. Every mistake I have had has been a vehicle for that. So that growth mindset. Carol Dweck Gabrielle Walden getting work. But then also I can't control every external factor and just holding that in an embodied way.
00:27:49:13 - 00:28:10:23
Ryder Delaloye
And let me just add one kind of curriculum example because we're educators and then be back over to you. We're engaging in a curriculum integration model right now with See Learning. And one of the best examples that I really love related to self-compassion is pertains to Romeo and Juliet. So in the United States, almost every ninth grade kid, 14 year old kid reads Romeo Juliet.
00:28:10:24 - 00:28:47:11
Ryder Delaloye
They read archaic prose. Some of them get it, some of them don't. Either way, it's a self-professed. And so what we're doing is we're taking SEE learning and we're taking three learning experiences related to self-compassion, how to define it, what it is, certain practices or an activity, certain reflections. And we set the stage for that unit. The kids don't do anything else with Romeo & Juliet, but at the end of the unit, having done those self-compassion learning experiences, they look at their final assessment and they receive a prompt, a written prompt, you know, comprehension prompt.
00:28:47:13 - 00:29:13:10
Ryder Delaloye
And the question asked this. It says, When Juliet finds Romeo, how would the story have changed if she were able to cultivate self-compassion strategies? So the kids. Right? And they think about it and they talk about it having them primed to this, having knowing this, having applied it maybe to themselves over those three learning experiences and they respond to that and it becomes much more relevant and much more authentic.
00:29:13:12 - 00:29:30:02
Ryder Delaloye
And then we do the real singer, which is we break the fourth wall. And in the very next prompt, we asked them this: How would the story change for you the next time you get a B on your calculus exam? the next time you missed the winning penalty kick? if you were able to cultivate strategies of self-compassion.
00:29:30:04 - 00:29:30:20
Louka Parry
Wow.
00:29:30:22 - 00:29:50:17
Ryder Delaloye
And I'm going to broach a very sensitive topic, but it's one that has plagued me in my entire career and in the Flathead Valley of northwestern Montana where I live, we don't have a suicidal ideation. We have suicide contagion. That means when one kid commits death by suicide in one high school or one community, we start to see this preponderance of behavior literally within days or weeks of it.
00:29:50:19 - 00:30:02:12
Ryder Delaloye
I'm sick of having the response afterwards being, you know, trauma intervention, crisis response. I would love to start getting proactive, and that's the pathway for accomplishing it.
00:30:02:14 - 00:30:31:08
Louka Parry
Well, Ryder, man. It's just I'm just so struck by what matters most, you know? And I think the work that you and I both do through our unique contributions is about that humanizing aspect, like the fully human aspect of I mean, I'm still stuck with the reflection from that young woman in Colombia, you know, now to try to see myself as I am.
00:30:31:10 - 00:31:01:19
Louka Parry
And I think that, you know, and from that place of, let's call it wholeness, self concept, positive self-concept, whatever the case might be like, then you can still go and contribute and be like in the world, but not not be so attached to getting validation outside yourself. And I really am curious about that. I've been exploring a lot of psychology of the past decade, couple of decades, and my dad is a psychiatrist, I have to admit.
00:31:01:19 - 00:31:04:17
Louka Parry
So that's like a whole other
00:31:04:19 - 00:31:05:19
Ryder Delaloye
Think you can have.
00:31:05:21 - 00:31:31:20
Louka Parry
That look at therapy. Exactly right. So the logos, you know, like the collapse of meaning is something that I want to, I think, have another conversation with you about, because I think what we see with young people, if you ask them, would the world be better and they go in the future and, you know, increasingly this is nihilistic perspective, which is no, because we look at what's happening and what's being done through big system changes and.
00:31:31:22 - 00:31:38:17
Ryder Delaloye
The other thing I want to let you prompt a quick thing, but I want to add one thing that is both terrifying and very personal.
00:31:38:19 - 00:31:39:11
Louka Parry
Yeah.
00:31:39:13 - 00:31:57:24
Ryder Delaloye
Do we saw each other in Helsinki? I went to Stockholm for the Inter Development Girls Summit and I was asked to speak on a panel. I told them, I've got my kids with me so how does that play? And they said: Would they be willing to share. What's interesting about that point is (excuse me)
00:31:58:01 - 00:32:00:00
Louka Parry
Yeah.
00:32:00:02 - 00:32:28:07
Ryder Delaloye
My daughter's ten years old. She's in fifth grade. She's prepubescent. And when she referenced how SEE learning is shaping her immediately, where she went to was body shaming. At ten years old, she's experienced as and because of the tools that she's developed within SEE learning, she's able to at least use a strategy of self-talk, right? Positive self-talk, just as you reference, you know, like she's able to hold that and substantiate that.
00:32:28:09 - 00:32:54:00
Ryder Delaloye
And what was wild is women and men in the session applauded as though some great revelation, you know, and I think that's an important insight that Cougar and younger kids are experiencing this. And the other brief insight to that point and I don't know if this works anything further, if you had something else, but when I was starting my career as a district administrator, I went to a local superintendent and I asked him a question, kind of a mentoring question.
00:32:54:00 - 00:33:15:04
Ryder Delaloye
I said, what's the biggest issue you're facing in your school district? And I was waiting to hear budget. You know, we just don't have enough money. Too many, too few resources. That's not what he said. What he said to me was something that was terrifying and has stayed with me my entire career. And that is the incidence of extreme behavioral issues with younger and younger kids.
00:33:15:06 - 00:33:44:09
Ryder Delaloye
That's the thing that is rocking schools. And so, you know, until we can address that, you know, from a ten year old girl having body shaming issues to young children that are uncontrolled violence, you know, another piece of work that I've been reading is by Nadine Burke Harris. She was the former surgeon general out of California and she really made the connection definitively between adverse childhood experiences.
00:33:44:09 - 00:34:09:03
Ryder Delaloye
Trauma and behavioral. And it's not that I want to throw you as a child who has four ACES scores, which is, you know, parents had substance abuse or neglect or divorce or so forth. Those are all one ace score. A child who has four or more of those and there's only a list of ten has 32 times more likely to have behavioral issues within schools.
00:34:09:05 - 00:34:25:02
Ryder Delaloye
32 not, not 3.2. 32 times 3,200% more likelihood of having behavioral issues. Just do that alone. And until we're addressing the elephant in the room, we're going to constantly be in this issue.
00:34:25:04 - 00:35:01:22
Louka Parry
Yeah, right. That's just it strikes me that all our paradigms are unequipped to deal, to respond appropriately to that, let alone be preventative. The AC, the adverse childhood experience work I think is so critical. And one of our incredible colleagues, Dr. Amy Fabris, our director for early years, and she joined us a few months ago. And she's just so on mission saying we have to I know you're working on this, but you have to understand that early is 90% of brain development, you know, 0 to 5.
00:35:01:24 - 00:35:34:18
Louka Parry
You know, and I actually think I don't know, I think we sometimes shy away from this because it sounds a bit fluffy, but like we talk about self therapeutic models or, you know, psychological support or social workers. But I think there's we always need to be talking about healing in our work collectively, like collective healing. I think the restorative justice work that many great schools use, for example, is partially that modality like how do you actually if you've had these experiences, how do you heal so that you can regulate?
00:35:34:19 - 00:35:41:19
Louka Parry
I mean, I think this is where we that we're going to have to have a part too, you know, because we've covered so much ground that.
00:35:41:21 - 00:35:45:07
Ryder Delaloye
Let me make a quick connection to restorative practice, if that's okay.
00:35:45:07 - 00:35:45:14
Louka Parry
Yeah.
00:35:45:15 - 00:36:02:16
Ryder Delaloye
So because it's important qualifier. I helped bring restorative practices to my school district and I was really proud of it. I really felt like it was a significant move towards shifting culture and approaches to student behaviors, to discipline, you know, student relationships.
00:36:02:18 - 00:36:03:15
Louka Parry
Yeah.
00:36:03:17 - 00:36:22:05
Ryder Delaloye
It's that restorative practices relies on a protocol. You sit kids down, you go through those questions, you use a talking stick and you work through things. But what I realize now is the lack of pre work that was done with restorative
00:36:22:05 - 00:36:31:21
Ryder Delaloye
practices. For example, we never taught kids how to do mindful dialog. Yeah, I never taught kids how to regulate their nervous system.
00:36:31:23 - 00:36:55:14
Ryder Delaloye
We sit them down, they just got into this huge fight. They're completely disregulated with this experience and we haven't built the anticipate or the prerequisite skills. I also haven't taught them on how to cultivate shared common humanity with the person who just beat them up sitting across them. So again, schools are so limited in time and training resources and we're looking for these solutions.
00:36:55:14 - 00:37:12:08
Ryder Delaloye
We're looking for these fixes. But until we can substantively dig in and understand it's about the development of these competencies and skills on the part of kids, we're always going to be a little shy of that solution, that resolution that we're looking for. You don't know if that resonates or makes sense to you?
00:37:12:20 - 00:37:14:23
Louka Parry
Absolutely does absolutely does. And
00:37:14:23 - 00:37:35:16
Louka Parry
I think it's a I think it's just one of the features of, like hard working educators right now who are and the data is, you know, there are so many that are on the verge of not experiencing burnout and there are so many that are doing incredible work sometimes despite not because of the kind of system conditions and the like.
00:37:35:17 - 00:38:03:04
Louka Parry
I think it comes to the core of our work at the learning future through korangi, through see learning, whatever the contributing contribution to the preferred future that we want. Well, I've got a whole page of notes, the whole page, which is wonderful. You know, we spoke about capacity science itself, delved into there, we talked about regulation, mindful dialog, reciprocity at the study, about priming, I think is so interesting.
00:38:03:06 - 00:38:34:13
Louka Parry
And when you think about how do you expand that circle of concern and compassion through that regulation, disregulation, co regulation, you know, it's a whole piece of work that that again, I think really support and equip educators to be able to do that work really well. Piece on burnout the idea of common humanity, non harm, adverse childhood experiences, suicidal contagion, negativity, bias and ethical discernment.
00:38:34:15 - 00:38:35:11
Louka Parry
So not bad is 35.
00:38:36:06 - 00:38:37:19
Ryder Delaloye
Yeah, we've got it. Does.
00:38:37:21 - 00:39:07:14
Louka Parry
I mean it is the hills. The good I really get for someone who you know is making is failing a lot, as you would say, and learning a lot therefore. I'd love the final question just to be, you know, based on all of that landscape that we've covered today, what is the essence that you want to leave us with through, you know, your work as a school leader and educator, now as a researcher and program director at Emory.
00:39:07:16 - 00:39:10:02
Louka Parry
What's your take home message for us?
00:39:10:04 - 00:39:46:16
Ryder Delaloye
Yeah, I'll take just a moment for reflection. One of the failings I used to hang with sustainability education. It's one of my greater passions. It's what I did, my doctorate working. And I think one of the failings of sustainability, education, climate education was that they use scare tactics to try and shape behavior. And I think we need not to do that in this situation.
00:39:46:18 - 00:40:11:13
Ryder Delaloye
We've talked about the urgent need and the dire conditions. We know that we live it, You know, I mean, it's the human experience and school is an impossible reality. You've got kids with such incredible needs. You've got very limited community resources. Of course, it's going to be challenging. Of course it's going to be difficult. It was always difficult right from the onset, regardless of the pandemic pre and post.
00:40:11:15 - 00:40:46:09
Ryder Delaloye
So I think what I do want to highlight is just these are skills that can be learned. These are skills that can contribute to the well-being of you and your students. And these are skills importantly and I say this from a very true and embodied way, have benefited me in my own life with what matters most, and that is being a dad and being a husband, you know, because of the cultivation of this on a on a personal level, in terms of my own practice, I'm not perfect by any measure, but I'm a little better than what it was.
00:40:46:11 - 00:41:20:17
Ryder Delaloye
I can cultivate patience a bit more. I can put things in perspective. I can reappraise, you know, the magnitude of anxiety I've felt the ability to navigate skillfully. Relationships, the ability for me to lean in and to be vulnerable. You know, all of those things I've seen come together and I feel confident that these skills and whether it's SEE learning social, emotional learning or adult program, cognitively based compassion training, there are so many high quality programs.
00:41:20:19 - 00:42:00:17
Ryder Delaloye
And I firmly believe that we all rise with the tide. And so if you're interested in bringing this into your schools or into your personal life, there are many strategies there. And importantly, there are communities of practitioners that have created a structure for you to do that. So I guess I have hope and I, for all the intensity and all of the concern we've talked about in our time together today, I just want to leave with that because I'm seeing so much happening in the community of SEE learning around the world and people are filled with a sense of hope and purpose and we are seeing real benefit, whether it's my own daughter or
00:42:00:17 - 00:42:10:17
Ryder Delaloye
a girl in Colombia. I think those are the winds and it's important to amplify those as opposed to exaggerate the negativity.
00:42:10:19 - 00:42:17:13
Louka Parry
Ryder, amazing way. Thank you for what you do and thanks for being with us today. Thank you.