Voice Choice Agency: Teaching Lifelong Social-Emotional Learning

Episode Transcript

Kelly: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby, the podcast where we discover what skills can help you live your best life. I am your host Kelly Ryan Bailey, and each week I chat with inspiring visionaries about the skills that make them successful. You’ll get a firsthand account of how they develop those skills, as well as their innovative approaches to improving skills-based hiring and learning around the world. Now let’s talk about skills, baby. This week I’m joined by Mark. Thank you so much for joining us, Mark. Cheers. Let me really quick introduce Mark.

Mark is an award winner educator with over twenty-five years’ experience leading improvement for schools, systems, higher ed and professional associations.  In his current role, he partners directly with [00:01:00] researchers, education leaders and organizations globally to identify innovative leading and teaching practice, building community and capacity by leveraging digital solutions.

Mark has taught both pre-service and postgraduate studies in universities in Australia and the US.

Mark has been the host of monthly What’s in EDU YouTube channel, the team-teaching happiness web series, and a frequent presenter at executive briefings conferences and international keynotes. Mark is an expert on the role of technology and social and emotional intelligence and education contexts, and leads a lively online community on Facebook, on social and emotional learning.

I’ll make sure I provide the link to that; it is a great community. He is also an adviser to MindUP and Patron of the Emotional Intelligence Society of Australia. In addition, Mark is a Salzburg Global Seminar fellow and member of Bet Global [00:02:00] Education Council, Steering Committee Member for Karanga,  and he also writes for Forbes on their Communication Council. Thanks for letting me gush on you there for a moment.

Mark: I’m exhausted listening to it. 

Kelly: Well, you know, sometimes we just need to recognize these wonderful accomplishments we’ve had and I am in awe and inspired by the work that you do, so really greatly appreciate it.

Mark: Awesome. Thanks. I mean I’ve always been driven, passionate by education by learning and by how organizations learn and how individuals learn.

With a view that when look at the purpose of schooling and education, not as places where people just learn stuff, but where society is created and recreated, that’s the stuff that’s kind of exciting to get out of bed every day. What can we do to empower every learner on the planet to achieve more?

Kelly:  

Oh, yes.  That’s exactly the same way that I think of things as well. Well, before we dive into your work, Mark, I’d really love to share about your history and how you got into this, it’s always fascinating to me [00:03:00] how people in life turns into something more.

Mark: I’ve spent 30 years working in education. I’m really passionate about regional and remote settings for education. I’ve been a teacher, I’ve managed the technology of schools, deputy principal director working across large schools and small schools, but always had this kind of this passion, this like two strands of DNA I’ve been interested in. One strand was around what’s the promising role that technology can play in education, but the other strand was always around values and ethics. It’s not what you know that’s important. It’s what you do with what you know, and the end of the game isn’t to develop second class robots it’s to develop first-class humans.

Across my career, what I’ve essentially done is pulled these threads together. Ethics, values, learning, learning science, even [00:04:00] philosophy, and technology as an enabler, as an expander, as an explorer to humanize the learning, not just to digitize content, if you like. And interestingly along that way, that’s propelled a career forwards in terms of leadership in education.

And then I’ll move to a professional association focused on school leadership across Australia and Southeast Asia on professional learning design for school leaders, recognizing that if you want changes to happen in classrooms, teachers are wonderful we’re great people, but you need to have leaders who have the capacity built around what matters most? Is it skills? Is it knowledge? Is it competencies? Is it dispositions? And then along that way, it picked up various sort of awards and recognition.

Seven years ago, Microsoft and lured me over. Thank you, Microsoft, from Australia to Seattle in Washington State to take on a job in the education team. My focus is on systems and system [00:05:00] leaders, and it was someone that is curious title with thought leadership, which when I boil that down is really always to go back to what’s the truth here?

What is it that the profession is orienting itself towards? What does the research and evidence say around what matters most right now in education? As I said before, for both employments, for specific participation and also social cohesion what matters most and, and how do we in terms of products or programs or approaches, how do we best provide the support and the leadership at times needed for education systems across the globe to be able to be the best version of themselves and achieve the goals that they see as being critical for their countries and regions.

Kelly: I think what I’m hearing is that you being able to join an organization like Microsoft is really allowing you to scale these thoughts that you had.

Mark: I’m the luckiest guy in the world and further the good thing is there was this kind of values alignment.

[00:06:00] Kelly: Definitely the dream. Well, Mark is there some point in this journey of yours where SEL, social emotional learning really just grabbed you?

 Mark: Yeah.  If I go back to an interview, I did a couple of weeks ago when somebody said, so Microsoft has been big into social and emotional learning, the process by which we develop those specific skills for a couple of years now. Now I kind of say, well, longer than that, curiously when I started in the company, we built out a framework for whole school and whole system transformation called the education transformation framework.

And this was eight years ago.  We use that across the planet to help host systems improve themselves re-imagine themselves. And one of the critical components in there has always been social and emotional skills. It’s always been a part that we recognized that in order to improve a system, whether it’s a digital strategy we’re [00:07:00] seeking to improve, a cultural shift, shifting teacher practice, it’s an interdependent piece of whole system improvement and you need to consider and consider really carefully because as we know, emotions are the gatekeeper to motivation, to cognition and attention.

 They are the contributing factor to personal success, to organizational success, to health, to well-being, to productivity as an inoculation against uncertainty and ambiguity and stresses in life, they must be considered.  We did some research a couple of years ago with McKinsey and Company, the class of 2030, in life-related learning, not college related learning, not work-related learning, but life-related learning.

We looked at those high performing education systems across the globe. Certainly, there were commonalities around content areas because contents knowledge is important but what was also interesting was, they [00:08:00] were very clear that this was as important, the status of these stills was equal to more maths skills, funnily enough, they’re all sitting in a high performing because you know, there’s not a surprise if you want to collaborate, I mean, collaborations important. Everybody talks about it. It’s as I would say to pre-service teachers, collaboration is more sophisticated than sharing the pencil pot. That sharing and taking turns is not collaboration. You know, collaboration is complex. It involves ultimately, making substantive decisions, which are interdependent, right?

That’s complicated. To collaborate in, you take it from a social and emotional learning perspective in order to collaborate, you need to be able to self-regulate. You’ve gotta be able to navigate that social context and self-regulate in order to participate to self-regulate, you’ve got to be self-aware, [00:09:00] but you’ve got to know what you’re doing, how you’re feeling, how your emotions are affecting your still, but also how they may be perceived by others.

You need to be as, Professor Bracket from Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, you need to be an emotion detective. In order to have that, self-awareness you actually need to have a vocabulary to be able to accurately recognize, understand, label, express your emotional states.

Kelly:  It’s really fascinating to see how really what most people focus on being like the academic side of learning.

When you realize that it’s actually their emotional awareness and their feelings and their confidence and their self-esteem, that change how they come prepared that day at any point in time, and that’s just as a child age. But I look at now what you’re describing this from adults. Like I know in my generation we were a very, let’s say, tough love in education, right?

Like it was very much like [00:10:00] this is the way education happens. This is the only way we’re teaching. If you fall behind, that’s it. So, when you see in a workplace, I don’t know if this is right, like every generation, I’m curious your thoughts on this in the U S versus out of the US right.

When I think about collaboration now in the workplace, when we haven’t been, you know, the focus on those types of skills did not happen in our early education. Quite frankly, did not happen at any point in my education until I decided to go after that myself. And so when you think about people in the workplace, like how are they able to come, ready to collaborate when their natural instinct is like competition, I need to win.

Mark: This is very true.  And when you consider, we are now experiencing up to five generations in the workplace working alongside one another, each bringing different skills, different values based upon the historical context in which they grew up and experienced. Some certainly [00:11:00] hardwired for independent or authority competition mode, and then you get this other group coming through who are hardwired for thinking out loud, rapid iteration, creative project bases have come through education systems when voice choice and agency has been the way that they become empowered to learn and then maybe drop into an organization which operates in a hierarchy.

But it’s different for employers now, the market is for the right employees with the right skillset and mindset.

You want to attract them; you want to retain them and you obviously want to train them to get the best out of them. You’re also beyond that and you want to leaver off the inherent values that they bring. You know, I say in education, we know we’ve got a crisis. We know that across 2030, the decade of 2030, globally, we need up to 69 million additional teachers globally. [00:12:00]

On average, by the end of their second year out teaching, 48% are thinking of leaving the profession and 10% have already decided to leave the profession.

Kelly: What are some of those reasons? I’m just curious 

Mark: It is interesting because you know, teaching varies wildly across the globe in terms of its status within countries, but the research is reasonably stable around that drop-off rate. From Japan to Australia, it’s about that amount for the drop-off it’s interesting. A study done by a university in South Australia, a couple of years ago it was published, sort of suggested it’s not what happens in the classroom, it’s what happens in the staff room.

Again, it comes back to that voice choice and agency. If you can take this notion that as humans, we want some pretty basic things we want to be seen, we want to be heard, and we want to have a sense of control. Seen, heard, and a sense of control. In education we talk about voice and choice and agency, [00:13:00] but it’s the same sort of thing.

So particularly young teachers entering the profession again, as I said before they’ve had an expectation of a way of learning and being that is very empowered. When they find themselves in employment situations, whether it’s an education or an industry where they do not have sense of voice choice or agency, seen, heard or matter, they’re not going to be prepared to stick out of that the way previous generations were because there are other options for them.

The research on teachers was very much around, it’s the micro political context of the school, you know, do I feel I had any control? And do I feel like this is work with purpose? And generally, these early career teachers are very values driven and had high expectations.

One of the things we dug into was what are their aspirations?  What are their expectations? And then what are their [00:14:00] experiences? This was another piece called The Staff of 2030 that I’ve kind of led with the Economist Intelligence Unit.

We were really interested in those teachers who were about to leave teacher college. What did they think? How did they feel and what did they anticipate? And then we caught up with teachers who were two years into their practice, right at that drop-off zone of your life and asked them similar questions around. What’s it been like? What’s your experience? Again, it came back to, not to do with the classroom to do it. And then you’ve got, COVID thrown in, you’ve got people who have found a mismatch between their expectations and their aspirations and their lived experiences. That’s interesting because was talking to a developmental molecular biologist the other day about what the brain likes and doesn’t like. I was talking about COVID particularly, but this applies to any form of kind of a [00:15:00] stress tension that we might experience, for these young teachers.

What he said to me was he said Hey, actually at a molecular level, it’s kind of cool with stress. It doesn’t mind it, it doesn’t like it for long periods of time, but then he paused and he said, well, the brain doesn’t like being out of control.

Kelly: Ah, that makes so much sense.

Mark: When you go back to what I said earlier, that voice choice agency to be seen, heard, and have some control, the brain just does not like ambiguity. It does not like uncertainty.

It does not like feeling it’s not in the right place that it can’t manage the situation. As soon as it’s in that, the brain at a molecular level, apparently it feels not good and it starts to then trigger all those physiological and psychological triggers in fight or flight and freeze response.

Kelly:  I think all of us can probably think back to a moment in our life [00:16:00] where our brain did that, you know?

So like, I can think back to throughout the time of when I was having children and the children were young and I was trying to navigate my life of like, okay, how do I do this and do this and do this all at the same time. And yeah, there was a moment where like my brain was like, okay, we’re done.

Mark: Lack of control, a lack of control will do that. And again, this is why you know, social and emotional learning they matter so much because one of those key bits, which is, self-awareness. You know, an awareness of the self. Not just, am I feeling happy today? Yes. That’s not what it’s about.

You know, there’s, self-awareness around my strengths, my capabilities, specific strategies to allow me to reframe how I’m viewing situations in the world, being able to take a different perspective on a scenario to start to convince my brain at a subconscious level that there is control within here. [00:17:00]

It’s interesting when you look at what’s happened you know, as a result of COVID across this year and think about that as the traumatic event. And you think about, as that ripples out, where people have got a sense of control and in education land, you know, we would call that efficacy.

A sense that you have the capability, the skills and the support in order to affect change, it matters so much right now.

Kelly: It does. It really does.

 Sari: Hi, everyone. This is Sari from the Skills Baby Team, and I’m here to tell you about the upcoming events that Skill’s Baby is hosting in the coming weeks. We’re going to be diving deeper into the future of work and the future of education, which in other words is the future of skills. If you want to be a part of the conversation, head to skillsbaby.com/events to register. We would love to have you. [00:18:00]   

Kelly:  I also want to hear a little bit more about, the foundation, Goldie Hahn’s foundation that you’re working with now.

Mark: Yeah, so MindUP, the foundation that Goldie Hahn’s set up a long time ago, like 17 or 18 years ago to explore mindfulness. This was back when it was largely still seen as kind of like a novelty thing that maybe people who like to burn incense and do yoga –

Kelly: I was going to say, I feel like it was like, we all were like, it’s the hippies. I was in that group of people.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I remember being in school back then bumping into the MindUP program so I was intrigued by MindUP back then, and fast-forward obviously I’m interested in emotional intelligence, social and emotional learning. I’ve been aware that it’s been a program. Earlier on this year we touched base and hopped on a call with Goldie and her team. And just wondered whether [00:19:00] Microsoft, because we’ve had such a strong focus on social and emotional learning for the last seven years and certainly heightened that in the last three years, wondered whether we might collaborate on a five-part series specifically on mindfulness, given the context right now, and bring in some experts to chat with Goldie and to chat with other hosts around this topic.

So that’s what we kicked off in the five-part series. Goldie and I co-hosted the second one, which was specifically on remote learning. So, there’s learning between the glass, how do we humanize the learning experience? How do we attend to the social and emotional needs of young people so they feel more connected in their engagements?

Microsoft did some research with the Economist Intelligence Unit two years ago called Emotion Cognition in the Age of AI. All of this research isn’t tied to using Microsoft tools and products, although they’re all fabulous and we’ve got plenty. But the research is sort of situated at that we [00:20:00] engage in the research and then we give it away because at the end of the day for us, we’re going to be better and stronger if we’ve got employees and consumers and even competitors who have got certain skills and knowledge, but also dispositions and capabilities and mindsets around how we approach work ethically and responsibly and creatively and innovatively and all of these are tied to social and emotional dimension.

But the research Emotion Cognition and the Age of AI certainly found that social and emotional learning programs or approaches are most impactful when they’re naturally embedded and infused through culture through the way we do things at our school or our institution, they can be programmatic but they run the risk that it becomes disconnected.

Kids don’t like hypocrisy. In fact, adults don’t like hypocrisy, [00:21:00] but we will learn it from people. You’re got to find amazing leaders who get that skills matter, that get that cognitive skills matter, social and emotional skills matter, critical knowledge matters, mindset matters. And then you will find that lived through the staff that they’ve worked with and built capacity with and then not surprisingly, you will sit in classes like I do all the time and go, I just want to stay here all day.

And it’s not that it’s easy. It’s really hard. In fact, you know, one of the things that I think is the greatest kind of a misname is when people talk about soft skills, because they are a lot harder to learn or a lot harder to apply.

And they’re hard unfortunately, to measure, which is what their greatest challenges is because you can’t really easily measure that on a standardized test. And we know that unfortunately, we treasure what we measure. So, there’s a [00:22:00] challenge.

Kelly: It is. That’s like literally what I focus my efforts on right now, Mark. Is like, how do we get to the crux of that? It’s like a miscommunication when we talk about, what people have versus what they can show. That’s the hardest part. This is why I’m such a big proponent of social emotional learning, starting at the young ages of course, but like continuing this as a lifelong process and having this in the workplace, because the thing is that it changes how you act at home. We need to figure out a way to like, get this embedded in our culture, throughout everything. It’s also something that I’ve noticed, like you can’t just learn at one point and put it down there are like micro habits that you do every day, like meditation or prayer or reflection or whatever the things are everyone has various tools that they go about to handle this but it’s not like riding a bike really.

Mark: And it’s not trivial or frivolous. You know, it’s newly important for more people. When I was talking to a, a [00:23:00] kindergarten teacher, so teaches three- and four-year olds, and I said, well, what does it look and sound like this stuff for you?

She said, well, at the end of every day, before the parents collect them, we do two leaves and a bud. And I said, tell me about that. She said, well, they talk about the two leaves, which are two things across the day, which have helped them grow, help them feel good and stuff.

The bud is something they’re looking forward to, right, that’s the bud. When you think about what’s happening with that kind of mindset shift at the end of the day, I mean, every adult should do that, right? 

Kelly: Completely, those really are exercises. That’s like the most important part of my day. I know.

Mark: It’s also putting in place and in a very intentional, sort of positive mind shift.  And of course, those little kids, those four year olds going to their car and mom or dad, or they carer or significant adults says [00:24:00] “How was kindy?”. These kids have just had that in their head. And they go, well today, you know, Bethany was really kind to me and you know, Kelly smiled at me in the line and tomorrow, you know, I’m hoping to use the blocks.

Kelly: Yeah, and that’s just like a smile. Right, because they say that, you know, and this is like a funny thing that’s happening with masks right now. But they just say just like a smile it’s infectious. Right. So, if your child comes out of school and they’re excited and they’re happy and they’re looking forward to you, like that also changes you, just like a smile would to anyone else.

Mark: Yeah, no, you’re right. And you know, again, it doesn’t discount that the child has fallen over and scrape their knee, and at one point somebody took their crayons and they were sad, but what things like that do, is it really brings in the balance. Emotion literally means to be in motion, you know, and even though for individuals, especially for [00:25:00] children, but for adults too, we can feel at any time how we feel is how we’ve always felt and how we always feel.

You know, I’m sad. I’m always going to be sad. I’m depressed. I’m always going to be depressed. This is clinical depression. I’m not going to go over there, but you know, I’m happy. I’m always going to be happy. It’s not the case, all emotions matter and serve the purpose in that quadrant of emotions from pleasant, to unpleasant, from the low energy being contained to high energy, I’m excited, they all matter.

And they all serve a purpose. The challenge is to be able to recognize where you are and if you want to shift from one state to another state, to actually have a strategy to do it. That’s where the learning sits in that I’m feeling this way, I’m feeling a bit disillusioned, poorly motivated at work. I know that, I know how it’s affecting how I approach tasks. I don’t want to feel ecstatic. That’s too ambitious, but I would like to feel a bit more [00:26:00] motivated. I don’t want to-

Kelly: I looked in my toolbox over here to know I can pull from.

Mark: What, or even who is in my toolbox and you know, that might help me reframe, rethink re-imagine the task, reach out, reorganize it and do something.

Maybe just have a brain break, maybe do some breathing practice, or maybe it’s a matter of hopping on the call with Kelly and saying, hey, you’ve been in this position, what’s worked for you?

Kelly: No, and it’s so true while we’re on tools though, I wanted to leave one last moment for two things. One being, I know there are some tools that you’ve been working on with Microsoft. I see the announcements come out that I’d love for you to have a moment to just quickly chat about. And then the second piece is I wanted to leave you space to give sort of like your parting thoughts.

It’s a completely open-ended, what do you feel like you want to leave us with?

Mark: So, a couple of things. One of the things that we talk about a lot is what are the new future ready skills? You know, in the past, [00:27:00] largely that agenda is being really focused around what are the technical skills to the digital economy. When we talked about future ready skills, you know, rightly or wrongly that seem to be oriented around that.

And certainly, our own research from the Class of 2030 and, and others and research by the VCD and World Economic Forum. Everybody has certainly been nodding that the new future-ready skills are this kind of intersection between short those technical skills, so the digital economy it’s booming, they’re going to make you employable.

But there also a collection of these higher cognitive functions, executive functions, the ability to synthesize and analyze, you know, beyond literacy and numeracy. Plus, also there’s the third pillar, the social and emotional skills that we know are the ones which supercharged the wrist and add if you like purpose and passion to the work that we do.

 On the technical piece, one of the things that we released recently was the Microsoft learn for [00:28:00] students. I’ll call it a program, but basically, it’s a collection of self-paced digital resources to build skills and foundational understanding in technology.

Students can develop skills on technologies like cloud, artificial intelligence, data science, really interesting cognitive services. They can experience sort of popular university courses, but the bit I think it’s really cool is they can learn to use tech skills for good.

There’s an AI for good component that students can engage in for free. Track wild polar bears with AI and classify endangered bird species and do all sorts of things within there. So the Microsoft program addresses that chunk, but it’s also you’ve got the link, the social and emotional piece is the piece that we’ve got.

Probably an equally expensive amount of resources for drawn from experts. Packaged up research [00:29:00] programs, courseware on the Microsoft educator center for free, MindUP’s on demand courseware. Which I think is really interesting that, you know, that we’ve kind of got these offerings, if you like, that can help, you know, and not the full solution.

But educators and parents where you can get students to go great. We know we need technical skills to the digital economy. Can we get some stuff to help? Yes. Is it free? Yes. Is it across all platforms? Yes. Need some stuff to help really better understand what’s going under the hood when it comes to motivation, distraction, management, attention.

There’s some stuff here. In fact, specific parents’ courses are coming out I think in January, I’ve been working with the group that are developing it specifically for parents and caregivers around social and emotional learning. Of course, you’ve got the [00:30:00] other pieces of the pillar, but I just wanted to flag that specific social and emotional support, specific support through Microsoft, learn for building those important skills, because at the end of the day, you know, we want young people to be able to, to get a job, to keep a job or to create a job. We know that ultimately, if we want young people to be active and informed citizens who are capable of making ethical and responsible decisions and contributing purposefully and positively to society, you know, they need this beautiful blend of this new future in schools.

Kelly: That is absolutely wonderful.

Now I know this wasn’t your last parting thoughts, but it was so lovely. I’m happy if you would also like to share anything else with our guests or our listeners, excuse me, just to end us off let me know.

[00:31:00] Mark: Excellent. I mean, one thing is a shameless plug. I founded a group or a Facebook group on social emotional learning. It is social and emotional learning in education but it’s actually crosses into business, academic life and family life and it’s grown exponentially. We were about eight and a half thousand people strong now. It’s moderated to keep out any distracting content and I would just say to anybody that’s interested in pursuing, finding out more, getting right context and also contributing to join that group.

Because as I said earlier, right at the very stop, you know, I worked for Microsoft. We see the greatest potential for technology in education is to humanize learning and not just to digitize curriculum. You know, how do we develop first class humans, not second-class robots, we know that AI and automation is going to have an impact [00:32:00] on the employment industry.

And we know that the very qualities that make us most human or be most in demand now and into the future. So, they’re the things that matter the most to show. 

Kelly: Completely. And it is a fantastic group so I highly suggest taking a look at it. Mark, thank you again so much for all of this time that you’ve given us today, for those of you that would like to follow Mark, he is available on Twitter @sparvell.

 Like you said, also that Facebook group, which is Social and Emotional Learning in Education, I’ll make sure that when this goes out on social, we have a link. And then more information about Microsoft Education is at microsoft.com/education. So definitely go and check all of that out, those fabulous free resources.

 Mark. Again. Thank you. I look forward to continuing to get to know your work and chatting with you. And I hope everyone out there has a wonderful day. [00:33:00]

You’ve been listening to Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby, a Growth Network Podcast production. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe to the podcast and share it with your community. Ratings, reviews and suggestions are great sources of feedback and always appreciated. Please reach out and connect with me on social at Kelly Ryan Bailey.

I’d love to meet you and continue the conversation. We’ll be back next week with a new episode, so until then keep growing your skills and have a great day.