Creating Cultures where Students Thrive with Larry Brendtro
In the first of two conversations with Dr. Larry Brendtro, we discuss a variety of issues from why schools really fail to why developmental relationships are so important to learning. Larry has authored or co-authored 15 books and dozens of professional articles and in this episode shares some of his personal experiences with teaching and learning as well.
Outline
Larry’s early career teaching at what at the time was called the South Dakota Crippled Children’s Hospital
Experiences at University of Michigan Fresh Air Camp and Starr Commonwealth
Challenges to quality schools and developing meaningful relationships with students
Why the Circle of Courage works in schools (and elsewhere)
Links
Reclaiming Youth at Risk (store sells many of Larry’s books)
Excerpt of Li and Julian article “Developmental Relationships as the Active Ingredient” (mentioned in our conversation)
Resilience Resources-Larry Brendtro
Transcript
Scott Lee 0:02
Greetings, friends and colleagues. Welcome to The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast, a service of Oncourse Education Solutions. I am Scott Lee, I hope you are safe and well. Our guest for the first two episodes of the spring 2022 season is Dr. Larry Brendtro. Larry is Professor Emeritus of exceptional education at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He has also been on the faculties at the University of British Columbia, the University of Michigan, and the University of Illinois. Outside of academia, he is a former principal, teacher, program director, and social worker. In addition, he has authored or co-authored 15 books and numerous articles, including Deep Brain Learning The Drive to Thrive, Re-Educating Troubled Youth, and is likely best known as co-author of Reclaiming Youth at Risk. Also, he, along with his co-authors, hosts the annual Reclaiming Youth Seminars. For information about his books and upcoming events please see the episode notes on our website. We start a conversation discussing Larry's early professional experiences and then we talk about why schools often fail to meet the needs of students, particularly students who exhibit troubling behaviors. Welcome, Larry to The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast.
Larry Brendtro 1:46
Good to be with you, Scott.
Scott Lee 1:48
All right. Well, thank you for joining us today. First off, can you tell us where working with difficult or challenging students started for you?
Larry Brendtro 1:59
Well, I needed to work full time as an undergraduate student at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, now Augustana University. And so I got a job working in the dorms at a place called the Crippled Children's Hospital in school and we had physically handicapped kids of a normal intelligence from all over the state. One of the things that intrigued me were many of these kids had social and emotional problems. If I were going to target one experience and one kid, it was a youngster paralyzed from the waist down with spina bifida. But his biggest disability, he was oppositional, defiant, rude, disrespectful. And I kept trying to figure out how to connect with him. It was very frustrating. So I noticed that there was a summer course at Augustana, I was going year round, it was called Mental Hygiene for Teachers. And the idea was bring an example of a difficult kid. And the psychologist that runs this class and your fellow members will help you figure out what to do. So I described this kid named Ron, who doesn't mind if I tell his story. And they said, well, obviously he's hurting in some way. He's lashing out, don't react to that, you know, keep being friendly and accepting. And so I kept trying that I tried humor I tried, you know, ignoring it. I tried whatever. Finally I went into my class and said, This is not working. Last night, he met me when I came on duty. He was right out in front of the school. And he said, I can hardly wait until July 17 to 19th the next two days, you're off duty. I said he hates me so much. He's looking at the duty log. And the psychologist says, I don't think so. Hang in there. He's, he doesn't care who else is on duty. You know, he's involved with you. I said, Yes. It's hatred.
No, no. And three days later, somehow, I was sitting out front of the school and he was in his wheelchair. And he said, I should have been born dead. You know. That's what I think would have helped my mother instead of, you know, I've ruined the life of my mother. I own life, the world I'd be better off if I was born dead. Tonight, I'm supposed to go to Luther League, the youth group. Can you imagine even if I take a shower, they can smell the urine from my diapers. Why would I ever even have a girlfriend? I should have been born dead. And I think that was pivotal not so much for him. But for me, because it really marked the whole point that you can't be reacting to the outside kid, you've got to hang in there and get to know the inside kid fast forward. Twenty-some years later, I was at Council for Exceptional Children, which is where people go for special ed. and I was getting updated on the latest research, because I was applying for a faculty position in the area of behavior disorders at Augustana College, where I've been a student, here I am in Philadelphia with 15,000 people at all these different hotels, I go back to my hotel, what would be the odds of this? It here in the lobby with his back to me talking to somebody, I could hear that voice. I thought he would be about that old. He finished his conversation. And I said, Ron, he pivots his chair and says, Larry, like 20 days or weeks, not 20 years. I said Ron Anderson, what are you doing here? He says, Larry Brendtro, what are you doing here? We discovered we both were at the same convention. I said, fill me in. What happens since I decided to leave Crippled Children's and go to the university and get into the field of troubled kids. He said, "Well, I was a junior in high school then. And I started getting promotional materials for colleges and universities. And you know, me, I was never much of a student. I said, I could remember that. But there was still at Augustana College where you graduated from. There still was a two year country school teacher certificate. And half the courses were reviewing what you teach little kids, I thought I could do that. I got my certificate. Nobody wanted to hire somebody in a wheelchair. But there was this one country school that couldn't keep any teachers because the seventh and eighth grade boys were such hellions they would drive Laura Ingles Wilder off of the prairie I interviewed they told me about how difficult it is. I said, 'Hey, that doesn't bother me. I was worse than them. I know their game, I can handle me, the only thing I'd need from you, is a ramp so I can access to the school.' And they were desperate. And they hired me. And I proudly rolled in my first day, only to discover it was mayhem, the boys were all acting up. The girls are cheering him on with giggles. And I did a little socio metrics, trying to figure out who was behind this group dynamic. And I soon figured out that it was Tony, a boy would act up, laugh look at Tony another one would look at Tony. And he sat there quietly orchestrating so at the five minutes before time to end the school day. I said 'I'm going to let you out five minutes early, go out to the bus. Tony, I want to talk with you for a couple of minutes.' I brought him over to my wheelchair. Ron had tremendous upper body strength. He had been five mile hikes and wheelchair and, and my scout troop and stuff. And we had a counseling session right there
came to an understanding who was going to be alpha, and how helpful he was going to be in my work, which is what happened. After one year I went back got my Bachelor's in the area of behavior disordered students, taught high school students got my Master's and now I finished my PhD in special ed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And I'm looking for a job at a university in the area of behavior disorders." And he said, "Guess what? There's a job available at Augustana where you used to be a student." And I'm pokerface not telling him, we both have applied for the same job. "Don't you think I'd be good?" I said, "you'd be great. Ron, I'd be happy to give you a recommendation." I got the job. He got a similar job at UNI. That's University of Northern Iowa. He married his physical therapist who had children from a previous, not well marriage and so he had a family experience. And the last time I was with Ron, Dr. Brokenleg and I were presenting about the Circle of Courage to 1000 people at a conference in New Orleans. And we were introduced by Dr. Ron Anderson, international president of the Council for Exceptional Children. So if you've got a rude, disrespectful, impossible kid, treat them very nice, maybe a leader or a colleague of yours someday.
Scott Lee 10:21
Well, as soon as you said, Ron Anderson, I perked up a little bit, I was wondering if that was if that was going to be the same one. I do not know him, I know of him, and had no idea of the backstory, that is fascinating. And it just reminds me, I'm not going to go into it, because I have talked about this in a previous episode. A couple of times, when I have run into former students, you know, one in particular, the last time I had seen him, and as a student, he had gotten out of a restraint. And there was it was a chaotic situation and, uh, jumped on my back and hit me in the side of the head, was removed from the program, left the police and I see him five years later, and he's got a job and he's working and, and everything's great. And you know, and he's coming up to me, I'm not sure what his intentions are even thinking about the last time I'd seen him [the] relationship work even before that very bad time was huge. That's a great a great story.
Larry Brendtro 11:29
Resilience science.
Scott Lee 11:30
Yes.
Larry Brendtro 11:30
You know, again, it's not all that rare. If if somebody is along the way, helping them I think some of the young people, young teachers, for example, don't have that perspective of being able to see how a kid can use something you gave them at an earlier age. Later in life as they build responsibility.
Scott Lee 11:52
You don't know if you've been successful a lot of times for 10 or 15 years 'til it's 10 or 15 years later, you don't know where, where that kid, or that adolescent has has been to see that what you did was the right thing, then, even though in the moment you'll net he may never know. I wanted to ask you a little bit about Starr Commonwealth. You were, as I recall, a very young executive director, director of the program there. I wanted to mention that if you Well, first off, tell us how you came to Starr Commonwealth and then want to talk about how how programs and what successful programs and successful long term programs actually do? What are the things that make organizations work, but start off if you could tell us about when you started there and became director
Larry Brendtro 12:46
before I went to the University of Michigan, I had been in school full time and working with youth full time. So I think that kind of accelerated what often would take more years in somebody's career. I had been a child and youth care worker. I've been a social worker visiting families, including on the reservations. I had been a teacher and I was the youngest principal in the state of South Dakota, because my head of Crippled Children's Dr. Morrison said, why don't you go get a degree in school administration, and I didn't ask him why I quickly did that. So I went to Michigan, and went through that program, including Fresh Air Camp, which we can talk about. When it was time for my dissertation. I wanted to study kids, kids with weak conscience development, so I needed subjects. And the largest group of subjects I could locate were students at Starr Commonwealth, which was an hour away from Ann Arbor, Michigan. And so I spent several months on campus, interviewing all of the kids screening, who would be in the high conscience, low conscience comparison groups, and I got a pretty good understanding that this was a very historic revered place, which had been coming apart in recent years, because the founder was, you know, like, had been there half a century and was trying to do things the way they worked in the first part of his career, and now you had kind of a delinquent underground. So I knew quite a bit about the program after getting my doctorate in the area of behavior disorders at University of Michigan. I started the programs in that field at the University of Illinois, at Champaign Urbana, and I would every summer since I had been a student at Fresh Air Camp, where we were trained at the University of Michigan Fresh Air Camp in the summer. I would come back on the faculty. And even at Illinois, I would bring my Illinois students back to Michigan. And the camp was then run by Matt Trippe, who had come from the Re-ED tradition at one of our meetings during the year of the faculty. He said, "Guess what? Floyd Starr at Starr Commonwealth has retired, the board has hired the University of Michigan to do an executive search. I'm in charge of that. How about for fun, we throw your name into the mix. You're too young, but it would just be a good experience." I said, "Great. Let's try it." Well, next thing, you know, for different reasons, mostly because I had done all of these things that you needed to do to make a program work. And I was finishing up work on a book called The Other 23 Hours, which turned out rather pivotal was translated into five languages. And it was a play on the concept of the 50 Minute hour Therapy,
Scott Lee 16:03
right.
Larry Brendtro 16:03
And so I think because of that, at least, they put me into the finals, I was interviewed in Illinois and invited up to Albion Michigan, where they put the four finalists, all older guys and me in different buildings on Main Street for four hours. And the format on the board search committee rotated. And all the rest of them, eliminated themselves because they didn't understand what they were getting into. They would say, "Well, what do you think about religion?" And the Boston psychiatrist would say, "well, the courts don't send the kids here for us, to religion into them," and so on. "What do you think about having the kids smoke?" Everybody else said, "Oh, we don't fight that." And in all those cases, it was like insider trading. I knew enough about what the dynamics were to realize that the spiritual development was central to Starr Commonwealth, that Floyd Starr on Saturday morning searched for cigarettes in the cottages, you know, to stomp them out. And so the prototype of the interview was, "what about cigarettes?" And I would say, "Well, there's two ways of handling it. If you try to prohibit it, these are your problems. If you legitimize it, these are your problems, there are no solutions, you just decide what problems you want to deal with. And I can't imagine Starr Commonwealth wants to start out the next half century, by having kids officially sanctioned to smoke." And when they're all through, they said, "well, we can't start another search. And the only one left standing, was this young professor from the University of Illinois. Let's bring him in, he'll eliminate the paddle. He'll eh integrate the school he'll charge on his white horse and a couple of years, he'll burn himself out, and then we'll find a more mature president." And 14 years later, I'm getting ready to go back to South Dakota, and teach at Augustana College we had created then, a system that had perpetuity, obviously the first half century duck together because of the founder, and that's not unusual. But typically what happens when a charismatic leader leaves, all of a sudden the new leader comes in wants to make his or her mark, changes the program fails, sometimes even builds their own reputation on critiquing what the predecessor has done. I had the curse of the blessing that the board let Floyd Starr live on campus, the rest of his life, have a spot on the board, have his office and secretary. So I could sometimes hear outside the door that he's talking to some of my staff, "and Dr. Brendtro wants...", you know, and he's kind of complaining about some change that was too hard for him. So I think that was the first point was to respect that there are strengths in the past and try to retrieve them. Secondly, don't be committed to redoing the past because there are new challenges and you have to be fresh and meet them. And then one of my millionaire donor board members said to me one day after I'd been there 10 years, "Tell me about your executive succession plan." I said, "I don't think you're asking me a question. I think you're trying to give me advice." He said "That's right. In businesses such as my corporations, you don't let random forces decide who's going to be the next generation, what you should do is set up at least the possibility of two layers of two successive generations of leadership, and then begin cultivating people for that purpose." And so with the chairman of the board, only being the only other person that knew what I'm doing, I prepared during the last years at Starr Commonwealth, the person who was to be my successor, and the person who likely would be his successor. And that continuity continued for 30, some years until the year 2015. In 2015, there were no more people left from that executive succession plan. But a woman who had been internal was selected over an outside candidate. And she had worked with us for about five years. And so Elizabeth Carrie, became the next president of Starr Commonwealth. And her chief operating officer, Derrick Allen, who I had hired, is doing his doctoral dissertation in organizational behavior in the field of psychology, and his dissertation project, is studying an organization that has four presidents of the five, who are still alive over the 107 year history of the organization in order to probe that issue of how can we create continuity and keep quality control? I do think another big part of that solution is to have a clear program model that people are invested in and trained in from the various levels of the organization. And I think we did that with Positive Peer Culture. And this concepts of Positive Peer Culture really fully overlap with the Circle of Courage, which is our more recent research,
Scott Lee 22:14
We'll talk about the Circle of Courage in a little bit, I want to talk about something else briefly before that, that is, you mentioned, one of your books, The Other 23 Hours. Of the 15 books you've written, obviously, Reclaiming Youth at Risk is probably the most well known. But that's not the first of your books that I read. The first book that I read, was Re-educating Troubled Youth from 1985. The reason I became interested in in that book, you wrote, "a relationship, his primary, assessment is ecological, behavior is holistic, crisis is opportunity, and teaching is humanistic and pragmatic". Research continues to demonstrate that you and your co-author Arlen Ness, were correct, and yet, education, policy and practice often lags. What do you see is the reason for that? And what should be done, and what should a classroom level educator do if they realize these things, but oftentimes are discouraged in their professional practice, from using the ecological approach, understanding the importance of relationships and the dynamics of the entire group, and how to, how to channel that to create growth and resilience.
Larry Brendtro 23:38
I think we have two quite different challenges with respect to education schools, in many ways, have a structural problem. They were organized in autocratic kinds of systems as under the kind of Taylor's Scientific Management: create the assembly line model, in the head of a factory was a superintendent and the head of schools is still called the superintendent instead of a headmaster or something more relevant to our profession. I think when you're in the culture of a school, it's very hard to recognize how you're being restrained by the notion, even that education is something delivered to people sitting in rows of desks, you know, with your scope of curriculum. We know from studying Indigenous education, that throughout human history, there were much more sophisticated versions of how children learn. It was experiential, you know, it was observing and pitching in and so forth. So So I think one has to at some level, look at the structures. This is why I think alternative schools sometimes have done so well, with youth at risk because they can without apology change. You know, structure in a dramatic way, and be flexible. But the second thing is something closer to what every teacher or administrator can do. And that's what is our own professional orientation. I was struck by a month of teaching across Scandinavia in Norway, that the Norwegian teachers all look like they came from the same profession. They're all deeply committed to the idea of democracy, as being the central concept of schools, I had a son, I have a son who went to law school. And it struck me that when you get through law school, you've been taught a certain way to think and to operate, which is very standard across that profession. And lawyers are quite successful. Using that way of thinking, you can't say that when you've been certified as a teacher, you know, there's something clear that you know, and what happens is, so often, we use our own folk psychology, our own naive psychology, we opened up an inner city charter school a few years ago in Detroit. And I remember walking the first day to the building, and a man who clearly was a maintenance man or something at the school, he had a logo. I said, "where do we enter?" He said, "I'll take you, I'll show you". And then he volunteered, "I used to go to this school, and it was a Catholic school, and the nuns didn't take any crap from anybody". And he was basically trying to tell me, we should get this back the way the nuns used to run it. So we've got this, all this folk psychology, and because we are not clear, what is our role, and what are our goals, and because there's so many shiny new objects, and there's reforms, so to speak, going on all the time. And I think maybe a pivotal scientific study of that question, is the American Orthopsychiatry article by Li and Julian from the University of Pittsburgh. At that point, what they did, they said in the field of education in the field of residential in community programs, what is the active ingredient of all successful programs, they said, we borrowed the concept of "active ingredient" from pharmacy, you might look at your toothpaste tube tonight. And there, me mint and sugar and who knows what else is in there to make it blue and pretty and tasty, but it will say, active ingredient fluoride, that is the essential. So what they concluded is that the active ingredient of all successful programs, is developmental relationships, and whatever wonderful reforms you have, don't really matter if you don't have developmental relationships, Urie, Bronfenbrenner, who in his classic Ecology of Human Development, which was 1979, he posits four ideas, a strong bond with some kind of caring adult, who then gives the young person increasingly complex tasks to master and gradually gives more power to the learner, as they become more independent, and then creates this reciprocity where everybody is all helping one another. If you take that for a moment, and try to put those into four words, they're talking in the field of psychology about attachment, achievement, autonomy, altruism, now those are kind of chilly, psychological terms. And in the Circle of Courage, we use the value based terms belonging, mastery, independence, generosity. So the point I would make taking their research as an example, is if you are focused on what matters most, you create successful programs for youth at risk or for any kind of young person, if you don't, you're in trouble. Another way of looking at that is the little known expertise of Abraham Maslow, who everybody knows from the hierarchy of human needs, which by the way, he never designed this pyramid. It was somebody in the field of business that took that. But Maslow said, most emotional and behavioral problems of children come from unmet needs, and the way to address these problems is to meet the needs. And so what these developmental relationships are these powerful universal needs that apply to every person in every culture. at every age in life, our Circle of Courage captures those belonging, mastery, independence and generosity. I know you've been having some health problems in your parent generation. And my father was terminal with cancer, and would spend the last three months in a nursing home. And I thought, think of how his Circle of Courage as we call it as broken, put off with the other people. He doesn't belong, as he or usually did. He could always fix everything. Now, he's not into mastery. He was very independent, he was orphaned to 12 and went through the CCC camps. But now he's dependent. And he always was helping people, and now he can't. So what we did in the nursing home is we gave him a job, I was on an extended tour of Russia, to promote the Circle of Courage during their short experiment with democracy. And we said, here's what we do. We'll email you the news to the nursing home administrator who will bring you the email every day, we'll give you a phone. Here's a list of all the people that want to know what we're doing in Russia. Every day, you're the news, you call.
So suddenly, he belongs. He's the expert mastering. He has power is serving. And our colleagues in New Zealand are taking the Circle of Courage, which applies from preschool through school age, and they're using it in senior care facilities. Because these are universal needs, they are built into the human brain. And if we don't have a science of how we learn, grow and thrive driving our school, we're going to fail to accomplish as much as we could.
Scott Lee 31:58
Our discussion will continue in episode two. The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is brought to you as a service of Oncourse Education Solutions. If you would like to learn more about how we help schools and youth organizations, embed social emotional learning within their cultures, and implement high quality, holistic interventions, please visit our website, www.oncoursesolutions.net. This has been episode one of the spring 2022 season. If you have enjoyed this podcast, please tell your friends and colleagues about it either in person or using social media. We also greatly appreciate positive reviews on the podcast app you use. The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is hosted and produced by R. Scott Lee, who retains copyright. We encourage diverse opinions, however, opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of producer, partners, or underwriters. Guests are never compensated for appearance, nor do guests pay to appear. Transcripts are available following podcast publication at our website, thoughtfulteacherpodcast.com, sponsorship opportunities or other enquiries may be made on the "Contact Us" page at our website thoughtful teacherpodcast.com. Please follow the thoughtful Teacher Podcast on Twitter @drrscottlee
