Universal Values Supporting Resilience Development with Larry Brendtro
Episode 2 of the 2022 season continues with the 2nd part of our conversation with Larry Brendtro.
Larry Brendtro and Scott Lee discuss how the latest brain science and social science research continues to demonstrate that youth develop resilience by developing supportive relationships with caring adults. The values that support these relationships are belonging, mastery, responsibility and generosity which are universal values.
Outline
The value of learning outside
Project Re-Ed and Michigan Fresh Air Camps
The history of democracy and what is often missing from history in schools
The scientific basis for the human values of belonging, mastery, responsibility and generosity and why schools need to support these values
Links
Larry’s website: Resilience Resources
The People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn (mentioned in the episode)
A Disability History of the United States by Kim E. Nielson (mentioned in the episode)
Open source publication from the Council for Children with Behavior Disorders on ecological perspective and Re-ED
Transcript
Scott Lee 0:02
Greetings friends and colleagues. Welcome to The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast, the professional educator's thought partner. A service of Oncourse Education Solutions. I am Scott Lee. I hope you are safe and well. Today we will listen to the second part of my discussion with Dr. Larry Brento. Larry is director of the Resilience Academy, which provides research publications and training on strength-based approaches to education and treatment. He has been a child and youth care worker, educator and professor in the area of children's emotional and behavior disorders at the University of Illinois, the Ohio State University and Augustana University. He was president of Starr Commonwealth for 14 years, serving children and families in Michigan and Ohio. He holds a doctorate from the University of Michigan, is a licensed psychologist, and is co-author of 16 books, and 200 articles on strength based approaches with youth. Dr. Brentro is co-developer of the Positive Peer Culture, and Circle of Courage models, and trains professionals worldwide, in collaboration with the nonprofit organization, Reclaiming Youth at Risk. He served on the US Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, during the administration's of presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama, Larry and his late wife, Jana, who was a research editor for his publications, are parents of three adult children, and seven grandchildren. We pick up our conversation, discussing the universal values of belonging, mastery, responsibility, and generosity, and how these values support thriving.
Larry Brendtro 2:05
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 2:21
That's interesting. And one of the things, you know, that we do not often talk about enough, I think, is that we try and compartmentalize what we're doing in schools, as if it's not based on the same values that you should have for the rest of your life. You know, I love how you point out that it is the when we talk about universal needs and universal values. It is over a lifetime, not just a short school career, I wanted to ask you just one more thing about re_ED programs or re-ED programming, and then we'll talk a little bit more about the Circle of Courage and Circle Courage in the classroom. One of the things that that always struck me about a re-ED program, and I think this goes back to Fresh Air Camps that you mentioned earlier at the University of Michigan was the focus and the importance on being outside and doing activities outside in nature as best you can. Obviously, that's different in the middle of an urban city, compared to a rural area. Could you speak a little bit to the importance of outside our activity and learning outside and how that connects to the work of teachers and growth for students?
Larry Brendtro 3:43
Again, I think of Denmark, you know, where there are regulations as to how much time you must be out of your seats in the world as you're trying to apply what you learn in a real way. I was mentored by Fritz Redl and David Wineman's Fresh Air Camp experience. And Redl came from Austria, where they had this wanderlust as part of education, where you would actually take kids camping sometime during the year and Redl would say you could learn more about a kid in a weekend of camping than you could testing them. Right and left I remember at Fresh Air Camp, when we were doing assessments in order to get credit in psychology. We were required to follow the kid around for a day before we started doing these instruments and so on. If you look at the human brain, it has evolved to live in social communities in connection with na- nature learning from experience learning from modeling older more talented people, and our whole age graded paper based curriculum where the only physical activity is circling the right, answer your question there, it's really out of tune. We also know that people's mental health is better. If you have some time in nature, they've done random studies where one group of people walk for a certain amount of time every week in the city. And the comparison group walks through the woodlands. And they both get healthier from the exercise, but you quit ruminating and worrying about bad things by being in connection with nature, I think what's actually happening is a number of us are part of something called decolonization, the entire education system of the United States, you know, really was imported from people who wanted to recreate Europe here, calling it New England, or whatever it might be. There were many great, and are many great important principles from Western knowledge. And it's absolutely essential that we use those. And it's absolutely certain that Western knowledge is not enough because it has blind spots. And throughout most of human history, what humans learned and passed on was a rich heritage, in the oral tradition of indigenous knowledge. And only now are we rediscovering indigenous knowledge, indigenous science, asked the question, how should we live in this world of ours to live in balance? How should life be lived? Western science is neutral. You know, I accept, like, how do we use science to conquer the Earth. And as we can see, as our globe starts shutting down on us, it's not working, or look at our systems of governance, they're not working, you know, people are caught in this other way of thinking, because 6000 years ago, Europeans also lived in little hunter gatherer farming, communities are sharing caring for one another. And then came from the steps of what is now Ukraine, this very large group of warriors, you know, who had horses and suddenly conquered all of Europe changed the language structure of all Europe, but imposed this kind of power oriented, patriarchal system. And when we study traditional Western civilization, it's really the history, you know, of the powerful men in the church, and in government and warriors, and most of the world was going at it a different way. They were creating democratic structures, where you deeply respected children where you made decisions, looking seven generations ahead. So what we're now doing is we're discovering the wisdom of indigenous culture. And we're trying to decolonize these kind of top down autocratic, more limited types of education. And that, of course, is the whole work we've done with the Circle of Courage.
Scott Lee 8:34
It's interesting that you mentioned the indigenous wisdom. When you look at the writings of many of the framers of the US Constitution, you know, they are looking at the Iroquois Confederation as the model because the only other model of government that is remotely republican style, democratic approach at the time would have been the Netherlands. And that was it. And so they relied much more than the history books tell us on particularly the Iroquois Confederation to develop our own system of government, because it was the most democratic and that I think, leads us right into why the Circle of Courage, why does it remain relevant to our profession?
Larry Brendtro 9:24
Let me just comment, the three founders of the Iroquois Confederacy, which dates back to 1100, our kind of unnamed spiritual founder, the messenger Hiawatha, and Jigonsaseh, who was the head of the clan mothers, the chiefs were all selected by the women. If they made bad decisions, the Supreme Court of the clan mothers would overrule them and replace them. So we were only partially borrowing these systems you know if
Scott Lee 9:57
that is true
Larry Brendtro 9:57
male democracy
Scott Lee 9:59
Absolutely, yes.
Larry Brendtro 10:01
And I think the irony is that the messenger Hiawatha is the name applied to the federal government's only national institution for insane Indians, which is located remains of a 20 miles from where I am in South Dakota, where they took unmanageable Indians and they shackled them to their desks with a chamber pot. And the most abusive treatment of Indians was all done in the name of Hiawatha, the Messenger of democracy. But now that's diverging from where you went with your question
Scott Lee 10:46
We could probably do do an entire series and somebody should because it would start to get outside of my area of expertise about the real history. I know that that there have been several books written and I'm gonna, in the episode notes, make some suggestion about reimagining history. Yeah, yeah. And that's one of them. People's History of the United States, of course, Howard Zinn's book. I spoke about this with somebody else about a year ago on the podcast, a disability history of the United States by Kim Nielsen. There is half a chapter devoted to Iroquois and Confederation and Hiawatha because Hiawatha was the interpreter. For the Great Peacemaker, [Deganawidah] the Great Peacemaker was disabled by a speech impediment, and people could not understand him. So Hiawatha became the Peacemakers interpreter, and shared his message with the people. Anyway, there, there is a whole lot of history and how indigenous people and people with disabilities fit in that most people are unaware of, all the more reason to have a different focus on on history and our understanding, and how it connects with science and how to live within the world fascinating that we diverged into this whole area. But I would like to get back and have you speak a bit about the Circle of Courage, first off one thing, just kind of as an aside, if somebody has read the second edition of Reclaiming Youth at Risk, there is a new edition out. I've mentioned that because if people are familiar with the second edition, I highly recommend getting the third and rereading it, because you all completely rewrote the third edition. First off, if you could just tell us a little bit about the differences between the two, that you all completely rewrote the book, the themes are the same, but the content changed. Can you speak to that give folks some context for what has changed since the second edition was written.
Larry Brendtro 13:02
Now the first edition in 1990, the second in 2002, were very similar. We added something about George Bluebird, the artist, and we added a few research studies, but they were very, very similar. So substantially, you're talking about a book that was conceptualized in the late 1980s, which then became kind of the best seller, of that publisher. And so the publisher invited us, would we consider redoing it, you know, because it's been so long. And the big changes have to do with how much more we understand about brain science at this point in time about trauma, more importantly, about resilience. And the fact that when we wrote the first edition, we largely were organized as my colleague Martin Brokenleg, was a Lakota psychologist were largely organized about how the Native Americans, particularly of the plains reared children. And no longer had that been published, when suddenly other indigenous people said, would you come and do training in South Africa? Because for 500 years, we've been under the thumb of the Dutch or the, the English? Or would you come to New Zealand and work with the Maori. And so we enriched this by looking at indigenous people worldwide. I think it might be important to go back and say, "How did this whole book emerge?" What happens is in the late 80s, Dr. Norman Powell, a colleague calls me and says, "I'm head of the program of an international conference of the Child Welfare League of America in Washington DC. We only have one Canadian who would be willing to be part of a panel on Native issues. You've been working with Native kids from early in your career. Could you come and participate?" I said, "I think so." I said, "could you give me the contact of the Canadian? I said, is he native?" And this Norm said, "I'm sure he is." I called him. He was French. I called back and I said, "this thing you want us to do working with Native youth in North America, we better find a Native American." And Norm said, "Can you see if you can find me someone to head this up, I said, I'll work on it." I hung up, push four buttons on the Augustana, intercom, "Brokenleg here." I said, "Brendto here, I've gotten a deal for you." I call them back and said, "the head of this presentation is Dr. Martin Brokenleg a Lakota psychologist, therapist, drug counselor, present chaplain, all kinds of things he's done in his career." And Norman was very excited, and sent us a suggested copy about how we'll talk about how discrimination has affected Native kids in North America, Martin, and I huddled and said, let's tell him, we don't want that topic. What we're going to write about is if Europeans were really clever, when they got over here, they would say "these people know how to raise respectful children, without beating on them. How did they do it?" That's what we want to write about. And so as we prepared the ideas, we studied, this first generation of literature written mostly 100 years ago, by people who were reared in the traditional values, then were kind of ripped from their families, put in boarding schools, where you beat them if they spoke their language, tried to train them into Europeans. And then some of them went off and became physicians and anthropologists and an authors. And so we use that literature. And then we created a kind of consilience, or a synergy by matching what we learned from Native people with modern science to see what concepts exist. And so we came up with the idea from this literature, that it's absolutely essential that you create belonging and traditional cultures, every child had many mothers and fathers, you wouldn't have abuse because the whole small tribe was making sure that children were treated as sacred beings, which is the name for child in Lakota traditions, gift of God is the name of a child. In New Zealand in the Maori tradition, what wonders has got brought is from the Igbo, African language, you see, indigenous people knew everything depends on how we rear and respect our children, and European saw children as a child. So that basically was how we constructed it, and then quickly discovered, there was something universal going on. And then we were able to find that resilience, science, neuroscience and so on, shows that if this is universal, it's because it's built into the human DNA, we have evolved to be our brother's keeper, this dominance of the most powerful was not legitimately out of evolutionary theory from Da-, Darwin, survival of the fittest was white supremacy, you know, converting that to justify the dominance of the European culture. And so what the Circle of Courage does, and Martin said, why don't you go into the prison and meet a terrific Lakota artist serving a life sentence he's been in since his early 20s, George Bluebird, and have him do art that demonstrates the four ideas. And so that's what we did. And the center plates of the book itself have always been George Bluebird's art. And when the first book came from the publisher, I took it into the prison School, where the principal was one of my masters students, at Augustana. She set up a ceremony where we presented the first copy of Reclaiming Youth at Risk with color plates of George Bluebird are showing the Circle of Courage a medicine wheel, and then belonging, mastery, independence, generosity. And then George Bluebird explained what belonging really was, as he shows a picture of himself, dancing with his son, White Buffalo, who he actually hadn't seen since the child was an infant, he shows himself being taught how to shoot a bow and arrow, and always taught look at someone better than you as a model. And if you're the best, teach others who want to know what your skill might be, and then independence of a youth on a vision quest, looking to see who I would become, and maybe most important of all generosity, how you can give away whenever you get those values are universal. There's no place that we've done training in over two dozen countries in the world. There's no place people say, Oh, in our culture, we don't like belonging, mastery, independence, generosity. We like rejection, failure, irresponsibility, and selfishness. But the question is, how much fidelity does the culture have, to what the universal needs of human beings would be? And indigenous cultures were organized around meeting those needs. And Western culture has got widely distracted. By this quest for power. I did a presentation on the Circle of Courage to Aboriginal elders in an evening program in Western Australia, in Perth. And at the end, this old Aboriginal woman came up and said, I was so surprised to see the Lakota have the same kind of beliefs that we do. In Australia. I think she said, there's only two kinds of cultures in the world. Cultures built around people struggling for power. And culture is built around respect. And that is the transformation that we try to make in our relationships with students in our classrooms, in our schools. And I'm looking forward to when we can do it in our government systems and our communities.
Scott Lee 22:31
talk just briefly about the Reclaiming Youth Conference, since you all published the Reclaiming Youth book, you and your co-authors, Martin Brokenleg and Steve Van Bockern, And now along with Mark Fredo as well have been hosting, generally an annual conference, sometimes in more than one place even called the Reclaiming Youth Seminars. And can you first tell us a little bit about where that came from in the history of it. But also tell us about the upcoming conferences
Larry Brendtro 23:07
very early after the publication of Reclaiming Youth at Risk. I was invited by Fred Tully, who was the director of the Black Hills Children's Home to do a master's degree in extension built around these principles. We were sitting on this beautiful Black Hills campus with all these mostly Native American kids in residential treatment. And he said, you know, you and I have gone to conferences where we sit in windowless Holiday Inn rooms, maybe we should start doing something out here in Black Hills. And so we began at the beginning, on the campus of the Black Hills children's home, clear, the kids out of the cafeteria, the first 100 people that registered and it quickly grew to other locations. And so for many years, it was in the Black Hills for the first 25 years. And then logistically, it's easier for people to travel and expenses or less to come to Augustana University and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where we now are located. And so we've been running these things and people come from lots of different backgrounds, not just educators, but you know, people interested in working with challenging Children, Youth and Families. Over the years international connections were made by that those conferences will be posted, along with different publications and so forth that we have on the reclaimingyouth.org website, which is our nonprofit that entity that works to continue this, we also have a whole series of trainings that have spun off of the Circle of Courage model. And all of those are listed there. For example, we have an assessment model, built on the Circle of Courage. We have a certification course, in Reclaiming Youth at Risk, the Circle of Courage, we have a course on how you change the culture of schools and organizations. You see whatever it is, that is the challenge. The universal concepts are the same. How do how do we meet these growth needs so that children thrive and prosper?
Scott Lee 25:50
I know I've been to several of those myself, I can speak from personal experience as the director of a school that was part of a residential program, we were able to affect wonderful culture change using the Circle of Courage model. You know, I know from my own personal experience, the effects on our students were were immense, moving from a more punishment based system to one that focused on universal needs, and developing relationships. Once again, thank you for being on the Thoughtful Teacher Podcast.
Larry Brendtro 26:29
Thank you, Scott.
Scott Lee 26:34
The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is brought to you as a service of Oncourse Education Solutions. If you would like to learn more how we help schools and youth organizations, embed social emotional learning within their cultures, and implement strength-based restorative interventions, please visit our website, www.oncoursesolutions.net. This has been episode two 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 on our website, thoughtfulteacherpodcast.com. Sponsorship opportunities or other enquiries may be made on the "Contact Us" page at our website thoughtfulteacherpodcast.com. Please follow the Thoughtful Teacher Podcast on Twitter @drrscottlee
