We Get the Chance to Work with The Best Kids with Raymond Appleberry, Brian Hopkins, & Lynne Roland
Lynne Roland, Brain Hopkins, and Raymond Appleberry are educators in the Grand Prairie Independent School District in Texas and Rising Phoenix Consulting. In this episode they share their stories of creating a culture where students develop resilience because of their work implementing restorative practices and cultivate positive relationships based on The Circle of Courage Model.
Other links:
Summer Institute website mentioned in episode
Rising Phoenix Training and Consulting website
There is a book on about “kid whispering” if you are interested (written by JC Chambers and Mark Freado)
Transcript
Scott Lee: 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.
Effective teaching requires time and effort to develop relationships, implement restorative practices and build trust with students. Today our guests share with us how they have done all of those things over the past several years in their public school district in Texas.
Lynne Roland is a school-based therapist who will share how she found success with students by shifting from primarily working in counseling sessions to working with students in classrooms and hallways. Brian Hopkins has held several roles including substitute teacher, paraprofessional, special education teacher and several leadership roles, he will share how he resisted moving away from a punishment focused approach with students. And Raymond Appleberry has also been a special education teacher, a paraprofessional and school leader who will share how he was not planning to work with students who experienced traumatic backgrounds but the work came naturally to him.
Each leads various student-centered initiatives the Grand Prairie Independent School District in Texas and are co-founders of Rising Phoenix Training and Consulting.
Welcome all three of you to the Thoughtful Teacher Podcast.
Lynne Roland: Thank you so much for having us.
Brian Hopkins: Yeah, man, it's definitely good to be here. We appreciate you having us on. It's a great opportunity.
Raymond Appleberry: Yes, thank you for having us on, Scott.
Scott Lee: So, let's start off with learning a little bit about your roles and how you all begin working together.
Lynne Roland: Well, Scott, the way we first started working together, I first came to Grand Prairie ISD. I came from a child welfare background, and this was my first time coming to education.
And, uh, boy, was I surprised. They told me when I was hired, you will be working with students with emotional disturbance. And they said, are you familiar with that? And I said, sure, and then I went home and looked it up in the dictionary and I found, wow, I don't even know what that is. So, as I began working with these middle and high school and even elementary students, I found that, Whatever I learned in counselor school, was completely ineffective.
So, I would kind of work with these students and they would go back to class and do exactly the opposite of what I taught them. And so, I began this long journey of just trying to figure out how to help these kids. And what I kind of learned along the way is, it took a whole lot more than just 20 minutes of counseling to even make a dent in, in just learning to help these kids. And so, I began spending time, kind of looking around in a classroom and asking other people, what works with these kids? How can I help them better? I asked other counselors and many of them just said, well, teach, teach them coping skills.
And I'm like, okay, well, there's got to be more to it than that because I'm doing that and they're still not coping. And so, I, I spent a lot of time just, asking questions and, and looking around. And what I saw is some were being a little bit more successful than others. I looked around in the classrooms and I talked to teachers, many of them in our particular school system, they would have a, Particular behavior classroom that they would use.
So, these students that had difficult time, being successful in the general education classroom, they were all kind of shipped off to this behavior support classroom. And what I learned from these teachers is they, they were very tired of working with these students. They were very frazzled, frustrated.
They had very limited training, if any training at all. They were just kind of using, whatever method worked. Very often it was, just trying to out, out yell the kids, fuss at the kids, some of the teachers had a completely different method of just trying to love on the kids, and it was just very random, , and no, consistency across the board, we had maybe 10 or 11 different behavior support programs at that time, and how you did in them was based on which program you landed in and I, you know, I asked people around me is there's no consistency and the teachers are not trained and the kids were frustrated.
The parents were frustrated and I just thought there has to be a better way. And looking around, started asking, you know, is there a better program? Is there a better method? Started reading about, you know, Different kinds of programs, different things that we could do. And along that way, we had this evaluation around that time.
We were getting some new leadership and we were getting a new director and. I didn't even know where I stood as a counselor. I was just, kind of a peon in the system at that time and I wrote her a letter and I said, please take a look at our behavior support programs.
They're on fire. It's literally how I wrote it. They're on fire and, she ended up kind of putting in place I think, the very first behavior support program facilitator and, that person started looking around at some different programs and one of the ones that we were directed to was a program out in Garland where they were using the Re-ED philosophy and they were using circle of courage.
And so we went out there and took a look at how they were running that program. We met Dr. Leslie Coburn. She's retired now, unfortunately, but they were getting their training and program out of PEP Program out of Cleveland, Ohio, which you probably are familiar with.
And so. Yeah, so we just basically got the same training as they did. We just copycatted them. And now isn't that what you should do when people are doing things? Great. Do the same thing they're doing. So, we bought brought their trainer down and I remember that first year, our tired and broken down and exhausted. I don't want to do this anymore. Teachers and told him, look, you're going to be [teaching] kids and counseling them and bringing them to circle groups and telling them they're great. And they're like, well, I'm quitting.
Scott Lee: Oh, yeah.
Lynne Roland: It really opened up more of a role of me not just going in and pulling kids out for 20 minutes and trying to fix them, but it, but it really put me in the classroom more, and brought about a much greater therapeutic change to our program and to the classroom.
And that is where I began to meet Raymond. Raymond was a paraprofessional at that time. I was working with a teacher in that classroom and she was becoming very frazzled and frustrated as many of those teachers were that were not well trained.
And Raymond, I noticed, had very natural skills with kids. You know, Hobbs often tells us that there's a very natural child care worker in some people. And when you spot that natural child care worker, hire them immediately. It doesn't matter what degree they have or don't, hire them immediately. And I saw that in him.
He wasn't Love and Logic trained, but he was using Love and Logic skills. I remember I asked him one day, I don't, Raymond, I don't know if you remember this or not, but I said you were given a certain child a choice, do you want to work on history or do you want to work on science? And I asked him, I said, where did you get that skill?
And he just kind of smiled and looked at me and he goes, “I don't know, it's just kind of natural.” And I thought, “oh my gosh, if we could just have 20 of these paras” but this particular teacher was getting to where she was frazzled and she was having a bad day and I said, “well, where's Raymond?”
She goes, “I don't know, probably on the computer somewhere.” So that's where I met Raymond. And, I'm just going to toss it to Raymond at this point and let him kind of chime in because, he's just outstanding, Raymond. You tell him more. How we got together.
Raymond Appleberry: Well, thank you for sharing that, Lynn. I really appreciate that. While we have a lot of stories about our inception of meeting and things of that nature, I've always been encouraged by the things that you have been doing within the district and just your glow that you bring to any scene. But as for me, Scott, as Lynne alluded, when we first met, I was a paraprofessional.
I had come into that setting only thinking I would be there a year because I had an offer, to coach basketball and I just needed to finish this year, get my certification and things of that nature. And I had worked with some youth, who experienced like ED, ADHD and things of that nature. And this had always been successful with those type of kids, but I had my mind made up. I was going to go and coach basketball. Right? And when I came to this particular school, to my surprise, I just fell in love with the kids, right? I fell in love with the opportunity to be able to serve these kids who needed some of these different skills.
So, at the end of that school year, I went to the principal and I just asked her, I said, “Hey, what do I have to do to be the teacher next year?” She's like, “you want the job?” When you find somebody with some skills, well, she recognized it and said, “you got it. I don't care if you have your, degree yet, I don't care if you don't have your teacher certificate yet, we'll help you with that.”
So, I was studying to finish my teaching certificate that particular time, but they kind of hired me on the spot and they put a substitute teacher in that classroom with me and to my surprise they worked with me very well. My first month they told me to don't focus on anything, but what we were learning as it relates to the Re-ED philosophy and Circle of Courage.
So, we did not really even touch any academics if that makes sense, but we did the academic semi in there. But we worked on our systems, we worked on our structure, we worked on our group contingency plans. We became a very good unit, and that set the foundation for a lot of things that we do in Grand Prairie ISD right now.
In meeting Lynne, she would come into our classrooms, help us with our groups. Teach us, different things about the circle of courage and things of that nature. And I was just one of those people that's from the onset. When I heard about circle of courage and the Re-ED philosophy and Reclaiming, I just took it and ran with it.
It just made sense to me, those universal principles. When you're talking about belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity, it just made sense to me. And I thought that all kids would benefit from that. Doing that, just to keep this kind of short, Mr. Hopkins was someone that I worked with at the YMCA, which he was my boss at that particular time.
He has some very natural skills as well. And he started subbing within our district and actually subbing in my classroom a few times as well. And so that's how we end up coming to meet. So, I'm going to pass it over to Mr. Hopkins so he can bookend this for us.
Brian Hopkins: Thank, thank you, Brian. Yeah, it, it is definitely been a good journey, meeting these two awesome individuals.
I was working at the YMCA also as a, camp counselor and a director field trip director where like Raymond said that that he was one of my counselors. And it's funny for me to say that because he now is, is my boss in Grand Prairie ISD.
And, we had some fun times at the YMCA and, and for me, my, my philosophy when working with students that then being a college student, I only had my background and experiences and so I had a very authoritative approach when working with kids back then. And so, if a student was misbehaving and at the YMCA, my philosophy was just to get louder and to, to talk over them so that they would comply with my directions.
That, that worked in a sense, it didn't necessarily. So, I'm not going to necessarily create an understanding with the student, but when I ran into some, some kiddos that had emotional disturbance, I learned that wasn't going to work anymore. That didn't necessarily help the situation.
Meeting Raymond at the YMCA was great because he was definitely someone that influenced me to get into teaching, to substitute teaching. And so, in substitute teaching and working with those students that were dealing with those more traumatic backgrounds, I noticed that we needed to have a different philosophy.
And meeting Lynne in that same scope and within the school district, I was, I was able to understand that we definitely need to have more a different viewpoint, different approach
So I have to, I have to give a lot of credit to Raymond, because even whenever I was substitute teaching, I was still working at the Y, so I had two jobs, and I was very comfortable and being happy in those roles, but he pushed me to get my certification, I really felt like those kids, I was able to relate to them, and, and help them. , and, once I got my certification, I was able to teach and, and, we were able to really rock with it from there.
And when Raymond says that he took those things and ran with it, he means it. He ran a whole long way because all the things that we have been successful in Grand Prairie ISD, I have to say that he has, he's developed a great system, several systems that has made a lot of impact and, it was great for us three to meet each other because we've been able to really run with it and, help, A lot of people and we want to continue with that and spread the news.
We ultimately have also created our consultation business, Rising Phoenix Training and Consulting. So, not just within Grand Prairie, we're, we're wanting to spread, all of the, all of the successes that we've had to surrounding districts and anyone that's, that's willing and needing the help.
Scott Lee: Yeah. You all host a summer Institute. Can you tell us a little bit about what that entails?
Lynne Roland: Yes, absolutely, Scott. As I said, earlier and as Mr. Hopkins was, closing up with, there's no reason to keep success a secret. If what we're doing is successful, just like Garland shared with us, don't keep it a secret. Let everybody know. There's no reason if kids are being successful, in Garland or Grand Prairie that they wouldn't be successful.
In surrounding cities and surrounding states let's share the word and get it going. That was the idea behind the behavior conference. As a matter of fact, we're coming up on our 12th year. Dr. Coburn, as I mentioned earlier, had the bright idea. She said, “you know, I'm tired of going to professional development that doesn't pertain to our kids.”
And I said, “me too”, We started that conference, she said, “let's pull together, people that we know people in the area that are like minded that are using Circle of Courage, that are using Re-ED philosophy, that are really working with students with emotional disturbance and mental health issues and that are doing good work.”
Let's pull in people like, like you, Dr. Lee, have written the books that, have on the ground experience, to our area and let people hear, how to do the work. And so that's what we've been doing.
And so, every summer, we host the conference, here in Grand Prairie, we've been getting requests since COVID to put them online because people don't like, putting clothes on in the hot July heat. They like, getting a cup of coffee and, staying at home in the heat.
And so that's kind of what we've been doing lately but they're just as successful online as they were in person and they're free. So, Grand Prairie kindly supports the bill for our big keynote speakers. We usually get someone down from Reclaiming Youth, and get a great topic about, dealing with troubled youth and get some good skills.
And then we have anywhere from 12 to 15 breakout sessions of people around the area or out of state that are doing great work with students, and get skills for teachers, school psychologists, counselors, administrators. that people can start using the first day of school. A lot of, folks that go to the conference usually end up saying, “I finally have a conference that pertains to my job.”
Or many of them will say, “I feel confident and ready. To walk in the first day of school.” So that's what a lot of people will say about the conference. They come back every year. We get new people every year. And like I said, it's free. The objective is just to get good information, tools in the hands of as many people as possible.
Scott Lee: Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about how everybody uses the Circle of Courage if each of you could just share an example or two of how that has either changed what you're doing or how it affects a classroom or student.
Brian Hopkins: Sure, sure, Scott. Yeah, I can jump in before even getting into the specific intricates of the Circle of Courage. I always like to preface it with, talking a little bit about my viewpoint of it whenever it was first brought to my attention. And, and I always like sharing the story because, Lynne was not aware, whenever she brought it to me that, I did not believe in it at all.
When she, she brought it I was teaching and it was one of those, uh, “Uh, this, this is too cookie cutter in my head.” I was like, “these kids need discipline. This is not, this is, this is not going to work with, with these kids,” like I said before, you know, I had that authoritative approach.
So, it took going through some battles. Before I had some buy in to the sense that everybody does need belonging so that that's, that's one of the, the main focuses in the first phase that we look at in the Circle of Courage so I always like to talk about that because I, I definitely I had some resistance I said I set up some walls for it and and believing that we need to get into circles and use the circle of um, but once I did I saw that these kids craved it, they believed in a philosophy, they believed in using, using the Circle of Courage, and they needed those values to become a complete, human and, , person. I always like to share that, with everyone because I, I, I understand that sometimes, well, not every time, everybody has their, their precipitating factors, you know, so.
I preface that because I know that whenever I presented that there may be some resistance. And so, I understand, but it's been extremely successful. And, throw it to Lynn to even dive into further how we've implemented it and how successful it's been for us.
Lynne Roland: Yes. Thank you for sharing that, Brian, because, he kept that hidden from me.
Yeah, I love watching Mr. Hopkins use it in his classroom because we saw such growth in the students. It was such an integrated part of his groups. You saw the transformation in his students because those kids. Lived for their progress on that circle of courage.
They wanted to know, “how many more steps do I have to get to mastery? And how will I get from mastery to independence?” And what we would do in those groups is we would have interviews for the students and they were a whole group experience. We would sit down and we would go over. So and so has been working on completing his steps for mastery.
He's been demonstrating, this particular skill. He's been working on solving problems with others. He's been working on, all those steps that go with mastery. And we would ask the kids who has seen him demonstrating those behaviors. So, he would get peer to peer feedback on other students saying, “well, I saw him doing this. I saw him working out a problem with another student by doing this. And he's been encouraging me by doing this.” We would say, “who believes so and so is ready to go from mastery to independence?” And they were rough times, every now and again, a student wasn't quite ready.
And so, and they could handle that feedback, which was a part of learning independence. And so, they were real time experiences, learning those intricate values of being able to demonstrate those true behaviors of being masterful of, your, your self control and be a masterful of the tasks that were expected of you and then growing into independence.
And then once a student was able to achieve those. Phases of the Circle of Courage. Then you had other kids that were struggling with belonging coming up and asking us. How can I achieve those? Phases of the circle of courage and so we were like Well, let's, let's look, you know, how can we get you there?
What do we need to work on? We still need to work on, not hitting other people when you're upset, so it was incredible to see in both, Mr. Appleberry’s and Mr. Hopkin’s classes, how those intricate values could be taught. Like I said not in a 20 minute counseling session, but in a real live experience-based situation in that classroom setting.
So, when you really live actively based those Circle of Courage phases and stages. In that classroom setting, and we try to model that over and over again to our current day staff in using the circle of courage that it's not just a pretty picture. You put on the wall. It's actually a phase stage-based experience in the classroom.
Then they get it and it can take a little bit of time to really understand that concept. But they can get there under Raymond's leadership. He's really helped us zone in and teach that to our current staff, Raymond, let me, let me pitch it back to you because you have a just a really great way of sinking that down and simplifying it to help other or new teachers understand these concepts.
Raymond Appleberry: Yeah, and Brian as well for giving us that experience. I always laugh when I hear that, because I kind of knew some of that as we visit your classrooms and things of that nature, but I will say, Mr. Hopkins is one of the biggest proponent as it relates to Circle of Courage and Re-ED philosophy.
And I think I heard this from [Mark] Freado, some of our biggest proponents or agents for change are converts. So, thank you, Brian, we appreciate that. And Lynne, all the great work you've done bringing Circle of Courage and, the Reclaiming principles and things of that nature to Grand Prairie ISD.
As I stated earlier, I really, started running with this process because I really these are universal truths, but also that these are principles in which that was just already embedded in my life. So, they were kind of simple for me to actually do those things. So, when we look at belonging, we understand that here in Grand Prairie ISD, the belonging is where that connection actually begins it.
And if we don't have that connection with our students and our staff, we don't have anything. And then when we look at mastery, we look at it from the perspective of this is where the magic actually happens. So, this is where we develop those skills. We talk about those gifts and talents that students have, but we also develop some of those things that they need, like, social skills and soft skills and things of that nature.
And then we want to be very intentional with the independence piece, because we know that each one of those students can be independent. And then we understand that there is a gift with generosity in them being able to give back. So, when we look at it from that. Perspective and from a holistic standpoint, Scott, we really understand that this is just something that we live every day.
And so, when you live, it is very easy. But if you just try to put it on, one day here, take it off another day, then it becomes a little bit difficult, but as we continue to develop and grow. With these principles in our district, we're understanding and staff is understanding. Students are understanding even parents are understanding that these are universal truths.
And this is what we do all the time. So, I'll book end like that.
Scott Lee: Yeah, oftentimes when I hear somebody talk about how they were resistant at first, and, had a conversation recently with somebody who, thought this was something that's just recently been made up. And the whole idea of therapeutic process within a classroom, that goes back to, Fritz Redl and David Wineman. In the middle of the 20th century and then even Dewey and, it's not really new.
Let, let's talk specifically about one of the, programs that you all, that you all are work with in your school district, and that's called the180 Reclaiming Center. Tell us a little bit about that and what makes that a good example for our listeners out there.
Raymond Appleberry: Yeah, thank you for asking that question. Scott. This is one of the things that we do in our district that I'm excited about a lot of things, but I'm very excited about this particular project that we started. I know that myself and Lynne and a couple of our colleagues were having conversations ago, many years ago about.
Some are very intense behaviors that were coming from our students. We had several students of mine that kind of fit the bill for the idea we were thinking about. And it finally came to pass, I think, around 2014, if I'm not mistaken. So, we've had the program around for about nine years. Is it's an off-campus program where we work with students with high physical, verbal aggression also sensory needs and things of that nature and behavioral emotional concerns.
The challenges they exhibit sometimes, as you would know, disrupt the learning environment in a very significant way. And so, what we're able to do is to work with them. From anywhere to 4 to 12 weeks is kind of like our typical time frame and we work with them very specifically on those skills in a very small setting.
Now, when I'm talking about small setting, I'm talking about a small setting. So, we actually have a teacher. We also have 3 paraprofessionals, and we never try to get over 6 kids at a time. Right? We also work directly with their campus because they're those students are still a part of their campus.
They're not listed as a different entity, but we work specifically with their campus where their campus actually has to have meetings with us every week as well, because we want to make sure that their relationship piece is still there. So, they come in and help and observe as it relates to social skills, and they're learning the specific skills that we are working with them with in a small setting.
So, when they can't re, integrates back to their campus. They know specifically what to work with, with those students, like, what makes those students tick? The relationship is a very big piece about this, right? Because we really believe that those relationships are the driving force in education. Just like, when you look at real estate, it's all about location, location, location, right?
We believe in education. It's all about relationships, relationships, relationships, right? Another thing that has been, beneficial for us as it relates to our district. And I'm sure this hit to some of the listeners out there is the financial impact that this had on our district.
Right? So, as we all know that it could cost up to about 26,000 dollars a month when you're looking at residential placement for students who exhibit some of these behaviors. And if you look at that, on a yearly basis, they could come up to the tune of about 300,000 dollars. dollars. Well, when we have those four staff members, that's only 156,000 a year when we're looking at an average.
Right? So, we're saving the district money from their perspective. But more importantly, we're helping those students. Specifically, from this program, we have graduated about 9 students. Typically, 95 percent of the students that we work with either graduate, or they go back to their home campus and have a successful placement back on their campus.
And one of the things that we started doing this year. As we started working with our students, after they graduated, some of the students that we have worked with in the past, some, some of the things that have happened is once they have graduated, they fell victim back to some of those same patterns that they were falling into.
We've had several students that died from gun violence after they graduated. Well, we wanted to be able to do something about that. So, we started this 180 Plus program where we specifically work with those kids or those independent living skills and soft skills. And we just got 1 student in this year that we're working with, and we're looking at the success that we're going to have for that, because we want to have that other piece to kind of book end just like some of our students that are not typically developing have.
Transition programs and things up to 22. We also have developed that for our students that have social emotional concerns, or maybe even high-level autism that may not get those things. So, I'm going to just pass it over to my colleagues and talk about some of the impacts that it has made for her and students that she's worked with as well.
Lynne Roland: Yes, I'm I so appreciate the 180 Program. One of the things that we experienced with having these students on regular campus is they were burning out some of our best teachers. They were absorbing so much time and energy, on the program that even our best teachers were like, look, I can't take too many more years.
And so, by, being able to bring those students over here, it gave them a breather break. We were able to work more intensely with the, with the students over here. We have group twice a day. We have counseling, both 1 on 1 counseling and the group counseling here. We have more space over here, so we can deal with any, extreme violent behavior or some more staff.
We can deal with that behavior over here more effectively and also to the amount of time that we can spend with the students over here is much more intense. We have the ability to. Work with the transition plan so we can tailor that to that student's needs. We can take them back to the campus with 180 support. We'll send a para over there back to the campus with them and we can do that for just two hours and then bring them back over here to 180 for the rest of the day or we can bring them to the campus, try them out for three or four hours, and if something doesn't go well, we can bring them back over here to the 180 campus.
Try again the next day. So, we've got that flexibility to work that transition program in whatever way best suits that student. And if a crisis does occur over the main campus, we can bring them back over to 180 and process that here. And it is so efficient. The students that we've graduated, have been able to do that.
Oh, I can't tell you how many come back over here. They want to visit with us. Many of them that we transition back to the campus, they want to come back over here and be with us again. So, we get, yeah, “I don't want to leave.” So it's, it's a high honor to have the program. Mr. Hopkins has been a teacher with us over here, and a behavior specialist with us at the 180 Program. One of the things I've noticed too, that kind of surprised me when we started it, Is the number of students that we have brought in. I expected it to be more of our students with emotional disturbance, but I, I've, I've been surprised at the number of students with issues that that have a lot of really violent behaviors. As a matter of fact, Mr. Hopkins has a funny story I'm going to ask him to share about a student that we had over here that, that was pretty, pretty big.
Hopkins, can you share that story?
Brian Hopkins: Oh, sure, so, whenever I was a behavior specialist at 180, we had a student , he was probably around 250 pounds, about 6 feet tall, and, was, intellectually disabled, and so he had some, some difficult challenges that he was bringing to the table, and was physically violent on a daily, hourly basis, and, fortunately, with the way that we have 180 set up, we have a very close connection with the parent and collaboration she shared with us that, that he loved the Beatles.
And, when you have 250, you know, 250 pounds charging at you, swinging at you, we, we all were in the yellow submarine, so we were, we were singing some Beatles, and it magically calmed him down. So, we were all singing, “we all live in the yellow submarine,” you know, so it was, it was definitely it 180 has created a lot of opportunities for a lot of different students and fortunately that particular student once he gained those skills and he actually returned to his campus.
Went on a date that year with his prom date, was able to participate in, the community-based learning opportunities. But it was, it was definitely interesting because he was presenting some very severe behaviors such as harming himself, biting him himself to where when he's bleeding it was so it was great that we were able to find some things at 180.
And honestly, something that we do at 180 with that, that amount of staff that's been successful is, is implementing some behavior trials, because of a phrase that Lynne brought to us a long time ago. As a conflict is an opportunity for growth. So, for me, if we don't actually address those behaviors and we're just putting a pillow on them, I don't feel like the student is ever growing.
So, we've experienced it being able to actually go through those battles with students. Not only helps our relationship, but it helps us to learn skills as well.
Scott Lee: Yeah. Figuring out what works, for individual students is hugely important. Before we go, can, can you all share, each of you share, another story about a, student in particular, if you'd like.
Lynne Roland: Oh, yes. Wow. There's, there's so many more or more than one.
Scott Lee: It's fine.
Lynne Roland: There's so many that come to mind, we had a student that, we brought here to 180, she had a lot of struggles throughout her school career, and a lot of them were due to a lot of family conflict, some parental abandonment, several brothers and sisters that she felt responsible for taking care of.
I don't know, she was a fighter. She felt like she had to fight for everybody in her family. She also fought people in her family, and, she had an early teen pregnancy and she ended up dropping out, spent a little time. In juvenile detention due to a family fight, and after having her baby, she actually came up to Grand Prairie High and enrolled herself back in school.
She was living with a family friend along with some of her, siblings that were still in the home. And, I think Raymond can probably add to this story. She was walking down the hall causing some trouble. And, I think, she saw Mr. Appleberry and I think maybe started cussing him out.
And Mr. Appleberry decided, you know, I think she would do well at 180. We brought her over here to 180 and, of course she cussed us out over here. Good number of years and, gave us hard time over here. I would say after about the third year, we, we were able to break through that hard, hard shell and she, she really began to shine here and, she had so many great skills.
She was very organized. She was smart. We put her on a path to excel and graduate. Oh, my goodness. She was kind. She was loving. We had another student over here at the top at the time. It was cognitively low and we would pair her with that student to teach her social skills, and taught her to rather than, handle everybody with a, with a Street.
In the street way. We taught her effective communication and I messages and effective responding, oh my goodness, she just, she just really blossomed in those last couple years that we had her. And one of the things that we do, Scott, at the end of the year, we have a ceremony called the Ceremony of Roses.
And each student in our behavior support program, both our autism-based behavior support programs and our emotional disturbance behavior support programs, is invited to choose one person, a staff member, who has been especially helpful to them throughout the year. And this could be anybody. It could be, principal, it could be a janitor, it could be teacher, a para, anyone in the school that has been especially close and supported to them throughout the year.
And they can nominate that person and bring them up on stage and give them a rose. And at that ceremony, it is, oh, my goodness, it's a tearjerker because I give the students a chance to say something about their special person. The first year I had it, I thought, oh, they probably won't say anything.
They'll probably get too shy. But almost every single person almost takes that microphone out of my hand and tells something about their special person. And it is and, and it's, it's one of those things that really honors the relationship between staff and student. And at the end of the ceremony of roses that year, when this student was graduating from, from not necessarily 180, but from her home campus, because they're, they're not necessarily 180 students.
They're, they're students of a Grand Prairie. She gave the, the speech-I always ask one student to give a speech and she gave a speech that she wrote about changing her life around and changing. Oh, my goodness. Tearing up just talking about it. But, changing her life around and thanking her staff and telling the other students in the audience, to, to trust their teachers and to trust those that are trying to help them.
Because trust was always her. Her biggest issue. I remember one time I tried to give her a prize and I said, hold out your hands and close your eyes. And she couldn't close her eyes that she just couldn't do it, and her person that she nominated that year was Mr. Appleberry, you know, cussed him out and he plucked her out of the hallway and said, I have a place for you, and it was just such a precious moment. And such a precious time in her life and our lives. And so it's just getting to see that transformation. That's what makes me do the work that I do.
Scott Lee: Anyone else?
Brian Hopkins: Yeah, yeah, I can and thank you Lynne for sharing that. I don't think that, she shared enough about how anxious this person for her to be able to speak in front of a group of 100 people and deliver a five minute long speech. Was really, I don't think there was a dry eye in the room. So that's definitely a special one for me too, one that really sticks out to me because we have so many as Raymond said, but, whenever I was teaching, we had just really gotten a good understanding of implementing the circle of courage and our students had really embraced it.
We had a great relationship. Staff student relationship, our students and something that we do is we really promote least restrictive environment and getting our students back to their normal setting. So, one of our students, he had earned a little bit of time in one of his classes, and we had a system in place for the gen ed teacher.
Needed to call for some assistance from our on-site behavior program that they would do that. So, a teacher called me that, that particular day, and, and our, the student was having some difficulty. He, he started tearing things up in the room, throwing things, so they had evacuated the classroom, regular Gen ed classroom, and called me, and called me down, and I went down there and Of course, everybody's all shook and, , I walk in the classroom and I lean down on my knee, get on his level and whisper something to him, , and then, turn around and walk out praying, “oh, I hope he's following me,” you know, and I hear the chair flip and I'm like, okay, good.
So, I just keep walking, assuming compliance. And he walks and follows me all the way back to SCA and, and, yeah, he was able to process with me and and he let me know that the night before that, His dad had just got arrested. And so, he, he was in his mind, losing a parent again,
And so, dealing with those things, we were able to process it with him. And after that, the school joked, calling me the “child whisperer.” And they were like, what did you say? What did you say to this kid to make him walk with you? I was like, it was just relationships, man. I mean, all I did was say, “Hey, can you please come with me, man?”
And turned around and walked away. And he, and he, and he did. So just it just preaches to the fact of how important relationships are, that kid eventually ended up that year. It was very low academically, ended up passing all of his star tests, and then, came to school, just in a suit and tie one day for career day.
And he, he said, I just, just like you, Mr. Hopkins, because I want to be like, you want to grow up. So that was that was one of my favorites.
Raymond Appleberry: Thank you. Mr. Hopkins sharing that. That's one of my favorite stories as well. When we're talking about working with our kids and Lynne as you alluded to earlier, working with that particular student. I would have never thought she would pick me, based on having those experiences, walking down that hall, talking with her, her cousin said, you ought to give him a chance, you know, he works well with kids and we got her over to 180 and we were able to work for her and she graduated and she's now advocating for some of her family members to come there now.
The one I'm going to share, I love sharing stories about some of the staff that I've worked with. This particular story is. Actually about Mr. Hopkins, a student that he was working with one of my jobs that I'm tasked with is going around and helping those programs develop their programs and just working on.
Some different things as it relates to the Circle of Courage, staff development, staff relationships with students and staff relationships with each other sometimes. But with this particular incident, the student was getting off the bus every day and he was swinging at staff. I mean, fist close, swinging at staff, swinging at Mr. Hopkins head, swinging at his staff head, things of that nature. And this went on for some time and so they would actually have to be prepared to use some interventions to get the student into the building. One of the good things is that we never sent that kid home. The kid was still welcome at the school, and they were just getting there and they will work with that particular kid and try to de-escalate him.
I would say that would go on for about maybe 2 or 3 weeks. And this one day, of course, the same behavior happens again. He gets into our cool out room setting and. Mr. Hopkins, just ask him a simple question. “Hey, man, why, why are we doing this? Like, what are we coming in swinging and things of that nature for?”
So, this may speak a little bit to the child whisper again, right? You know, just ask a simple question. You may get answered. Right? And the student says, this is how we show love at home swinging at each other. So I'm going to say that again. He said, this is how we show each other love at home.
So he believed using his fist and pushing people and knocking over things, that was a way to show love. So, through the circle of courage, Mr. Hopkins and his staff was able to work with this student. So that student was able to gain some of those. Again, values those principles, right? We do teach skills, but these are values and principles that you can live with every day.
And as we see that, hey, I'm going to be right here. I'm not going anywhere, right? I'm going to be right here in your corner. I'm going to have this relationship with you. And regardless if you like it or not, I'm still going to love you, right? So again, jumping back to that relationship piece. So that's one of my favorite stories.
I bookend it with this one story talking about like, Lynne was talking about the Ceremony of Roses, which is one of the amazing events that we have. And I'm glad that again, our district is able to help us and put this on our 1st, year of having the 180 Program. We had this kid that was working with us that.
Couldn't get along with anybody and we, just so happy to get this kid graduated and this is a pretty funny story. His 1st day coming to the program. It was myself. Mr. Taylor was 1 of the people that we work with as well. And I think Ms. Roland was possibly there that day as well. And the student come in, he's like, I'm not doing anything today.
Y'all can't make me do anything and the fight go with it So I’m ready to fight today and I just told him simply, “hey man, we're ready to help you when you can However, the door is right there as well. You can use that as well.” He got up on the stage and he thought about it He said when I thought about that moment, I said that to you all he said I thought to myself “I can't beat up Mr. Appleberry.” So, I think I better walk out this door. Right. But he also went on to say the relationship that we had developed with him, was paramount. Right? And he was advocating for other students and to be able to come to the 180 Program and work with us. Right. And he was able to.
Be able he was one of those kids that always knew what he wanted, right? He was always able to advocate for himself. And those are the students that we work with and I'll book end it what I always say I told Mr. Hopkins and Ms. Roland all the time. We get a chance to work with the best students, right?
These are the students in my opinion that could be your best leaders it'd be kids that I believe that one of these kids that we work with are probably going to care counselor one day because we work with such an innovative group of kids and we have a love for kids and a passion for kids. And quite simply, as Ms.
Rowland started earlier, when you find somebody that has these particular qualities and work well with kids, hire them, hire them, and we can teach you the skills.
Scott Lee: Oh, yeah, I can't emphasize enough the importance of, finding good people, but also understanding that, building trust and relationships is, is really what it's all about.
Once again, I want to thank each of you for, joining us today,
Brian Hopkins: yeah, thanks. Thanks for having us on, Scott. Definitely appreciate the opportunity to share our stories.
Lynne Roland: Yeah, absolutely. Our pleasure. It's great to be with like-minded folks and just share our stories. And like, like, like I said earlier, you know, let's, let's not keep this a secret. Let's, let's share.
Raymond Appleberry: Yes, I want to say it's an honor, man, to get a chance to talk with you and collaborate with you.
Thank you for offering us to be on your platform. Thank Lynn and Brian for being here today. Again, these are my partners in crime as it relates to sharing the wealth as it relates to behavioral interventions, therapeutic interventions, restorative interventions, and our plan is to take over the world with these.
Again, thank you for the opportunity.
Scott Lee: Thank you.
Brian Hopkins: Yeah, if anybody is, is interested in contacting us, we definitely are available with our, consultation, Rising Phoenix.
Just risefromtheashes.net if you want to visit us and we can help you guys.
Scott Lee: And a link to that. It'll be on our website as well.
Lynne Roland: Yes. And the behavior conference is open. If you would like to attend, like I said, it's free. So, online. So doesn't matter what state you're in.
And if you'd like to present, there are, breakout sessions, Dr. Lee was an excellent keynote speaker for us last year. So, always looking for great keynote speakers and, always looking for great breakout sessions as well.
Scott Lee: 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 partner with schools and youth organizations strengthening learning cultures and developing more resilient youth, please visit our website at w w w dot oncoursesolutions dot net.
This has been episode 5 of the 2024 season. If you enjoy this podcast, please tell your friends and colleagues about us, in person and on social media. Also, five-star reviews on your podcast app helps others find us. The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is a production of Oncourse Education Solutions LLC, Scott Lee producer. Guests were not compensated for appearance, nor did guests pay to appear. Episode notes, links and transcripts are available at our website w w w dot thoughtfulteacherpodcast dot com. Theme music is composed and performed by Audio Coffee. Please follow me on social media, my handle on Instagram and Twitter is @drrscottlee and on Mastodon @drrscottlee@universedon.com
