Roberto Germán [00:00:01]:
Welcome to Our Classroom. In this space we talk about education, which is inclusive of but not limited to what happens in schools. Education is taking place whenever and wherever we are willing to learn. I am your host, Roberto Germán, and our classroom is officially in session. Welcome back to Our Classroom. Today we're joined by Dr. Daniel Russell, co director of Advocates for CLR for Underserved Students and co author of Supporting Underserved how to Make PBIS Culturally and Linguistically Responsive. His work focuses on helping students rethink student behavior through a culturally responsive lens.
Roberto Germán [00:01:02]:
Welcome, Dr. Russell.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:01:04]:
Hey, thank you, Roberto, for having me on.
Roberto Germán [00:01:06]:
My pleasure, My pleasure. You know, I had an opportunity to dig into some of the content and as someone who's a former school leader, certainly piqued my interest because often had to deal with navigating behavior and supporting students and the educators in terms of how to best address that sometimes had good strategies and sometimes the strategies were failed ones, if I'm being honest. And so we have to be able to hold up, mirror and reflect on what we're doing well while also reflecting on areas of growth. So first question that comes to mind is how often is what we call misbehavior in schools actually a misunderstanding? Because I know I've experienced that personally, in which I've addressed students for what I understood to be their misbehavior, but really it was a misunderstanding.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:02:14]:
Right. Well, the robust research is saying that when it comes to subjectively defined behaviors like these, are these really vague broad categories like defiance, disrespect, disobedience, disruption, that a lot of it can be attributed to misunderstanding behaviors, particularly cultural behaviors that differ from the cultural norms that the teacher or adult who is responding to the behavior has been socialized into as the normal for schools. Right. My buddy calls those like traditional school culture behaviors. In fact, one research study by Girvan and colleagues, they looked at ODRs for over 1 million students in almost 2000 schools. What they found was they saw massive disproportionality around race and ethnicity. And when they looked at that disproportionality, the majority of the disproportionality was around six subjective judgments about students behavior. In other words, teachers were in their vulnerable decision points where our brains are more likely to react off of our implicit or explicit biases were misconstruing behaviors that were most likely cultural as if they were a problem.
Roberto Germán [00:03:43]:
Yeah, I, I could see that. And I think it would be helpful for our audience if you could give us one or two examples of behaviors Teachers often misinterpret and what's actually going on underneath. I'll give you a behavior. The behavior communicates something.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:04:02]:
Right? Right. So I'll give you an example I write about in a book, because each of our chapters kind of begins with a vignette. And in this vignette, I described one of my former students. I call him dj, you know, as a pseudonym, using my own son's name. And so essentially, DJ was my seventh grader, and I was here in California. Seventh grade is medieval history. Right. And so he's one of my students.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:04:26]:
But mid year, his mother said, hey, unfortunately, got to check him out of school. I got a new job. It's just too far to come over here now. But we, you know, she and I had a good connection. So about a month into DJ's new school, his mom called me and she's like, yo, Daniel, hey, guess what? I'm like, hey, how's it been? Blah, blah, blah. And she's like, DJ got sent to the office today for the first time in his life. I said, no, not dj, right? And she's like, guess what he did? I'm like, you know, I can't guess what he did because give me a little background. Like, DJ was the yes man, no ma' am kid.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:05:03]:
Right. He was in my wife's second grade class. I got him in middle school, so I got him for sixth grade and seventh grade. And DJ was best friends with our cousin. So DJ's family, you know, he's at the cookout. We see him everywhere. So I know DJ, I know DJ's parents. I know he's the kid most likely never going to do anything in class to get in trouble.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:05:22]:
So what happened in his new classroom with his new history teacher? She introduced a unit or a lesson that, that he had remembered from my class. And he was excited. So without raising his hand, he just shouted out, oh, I know all about whatever that topic was. The teacher told him that he was being disrespectful because he didn't raise his hand. Right. And she said, you're going to the office for that. Wow. And while filling out the office referral, she saw the word disruption and she told him.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:05:59]:
And you disrupted the class as well. So DJ sent out. That's what he was sent out for. But what we know was he was engaged. Right. In fact, because the research shows it's called participatory interactive discourse, or as my buddy calls it, spontaneity. We know this if we look at the iceberg concept of culture, go deep into culture. That being spontaneous, like that part, you know, this participation through interactive discourse is cultural.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:06:30]:
We see it in different settings. We see it in festivals. We see it in black churches. We see it in other, you know, in. In different locations where the way you show engagement and respect is by being active.
Roberto Germán [00:06:43]:
Sure.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:06:44]:
Through vocalizations, words. It could just be gestures. It could just be. Right. Anything like that, as a way of showing that you are connecting to the speaker. And that's all DJ was doing. But that teacher, because she had been socialized into the dominant culture norm, which is we show respect by raising our hand and waiting for permission from an adult authority to speak. So she misinterpreted his behavior, and now subjectively, you know, interpret his behavior as disrespectful and defiant.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:07:18]:
Right. And we see that a lot. And I have to say this too, because I've done this in presentations. People always ask me, but what happened to dj? What happened to dj? You know, DJ turned out fine. The reason why his mother had to move is because she took on a principal job and she was a culturally sponsored principal. So she handled that conversation at the school with the teacher and administration really well.
Roberto Germán [00:07:40]:
Man, that's crazy, because in. In some situations, that could squash the enthusiasm of the learner and it might make the learner just withdraw.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:07:54]:
Definitely. In fact, we have a lot of research that shows that. Right. These are those constant cultural slides. Some people use the word microaggression. Dr. Tyrone Howard out of UCLA calls it school based trauma. Right.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:08:09]:
These constant slights on who you are that make you feel like you don't have rifle presence, you don't belong. And students may not be able to articulate that with specific vocabulary we're using today. But they feel it. They feel like I'm not accepted, I'm not wanted. And we know that can lead to them saying, hey, school's not for me. They don't respect me here. And then shut off from that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:08:34]:
Your name is something really important about implications of these misunderstandings of behaviors that could be cultural.
Roberto Germán [00:08:42]:
Well, when we started, you. You mentioned the word disproportionate or disproportionality. And it got me thinking. If schools are using PBIS and doing it with fidelity, why are we still seeing disproportionate discipline?
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:09:00]:
Great question. In fact, that was the focus of my doctoral dissertation. I worked with a large school district that was frustrated because they had all the PBIS infrastructure. Right. They had leadership at the top. Every school had a coach. They had the funding, teachers and staff had lots of professional development. Right.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:09:24]:
Yet they reported that their black students in particular were suspended 4.3 times more than their white students. And that's higher than the national average. That's higher than schools and districts that weren't even using pbis. So they were totally confused. How are we worse when we're doing PBIS with fidelity? And as I went work with schools throughout the country, I started finding the same thing. People were like, wait a minute, we're a gold ribbon school, but we're still having this racial disparity in discipline. And then as I did my doctoral dissertation and my own, you know, my own research, it kept coming back. Number one, and the Leverson and colleagues who wrote the Culturally Responsive PBIS field guide, they say that you really can't have fidelity unless PBIS is done culturally responsibly.
Roberto Germán [00:10:21]:
Here we go.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:10:22]:
And, and most, and most of the schools that I've worked with and research I look, looked at, they don't. They weren't even aware that they needed to do that. If they were aware, they didn't know how to do it. And if they were doing it, they weren't doing it authentically in most cases. There are some examples, Chief Jimmy Bruno school in Canada, where they worked with the local indigenous elders to create their PBIS to be culturally responsive. Right. And so there, there are multiple examples of where it has worked because it's been done authentically. So that's.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:10:57]:
Number one, is like, you know, PBIS needs to be culturally responsive in order to have quote, unquote fidelity. But there's a reason why I say quote, unquote fidelity. We have to take a look at the tools that are used to measure fidelity. Right. And the main one is called the Tier Fidelity inventory. And the 3.0 version came out. And my critique is that the fidelity tools themselves don't know, don't accurately and authentically measure culture responsiveness. So a school can be deemed by these tools as having fidelity, but the tool itself is not accurately measuring culture responsiveness.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:11:41]:
Then you can see how a school can again have that status, yet still still have disparities in not only like, discipline, but creating environments that feel culturally validating, affirming, where all students feel like they have rightful presence, as Ruth Panel Simmons says, or they have a sense of belonging, culturally and linguistically speaking. Right. Where they don't have to feel like they have to compromise who they are to be accepted in the school.
Roberto Germán [00:12:15]:
Yeah, that's good. That's good. So, so important. And it makes Me consider the, the responses that sometimes we see from educators, and I was one of them, certainly. What does it actually look like for a teacher in real time to respond differently? What could a teacher say instead?
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:12:40]:
So my longtime colleague and friend, Dr. Straki Holly, he's the director for the center for Culture sponsored teaching and Learning, he came up with this strategy he called reactive babbing. Right. And babbing is an acrodem standing stands for validating, affirming, building and bridging. Right. And so essentially the method is this, and there's a little pre work that needs to happen because typically in schools that are using PBIS or PBIS as the behavior arm of mtss, they do the two column method where they identify what behaviors are minor and what behaviors are major. Right. Minors are staff managed behaviors.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:13:21]:
What often happens though is those cultural behaviors get put on that chart. But now teachers are responding to cultural behaviors such as DJ being spontaneous. They'll treat that as, say, a minor behavior and they'll use a disciplinary intervention. But an intervention is to stop something that's unwanted or a problem. And from a culturally responsive perspective, cultural behaviors should not be unwanted and should not be considered a problem. Right. And so the idea is you have to have another column which is culture behaviors, that instead of responding to them as a minor or major problem, they need to be responded to in a culturally validating, affirming way. So let me give you a concrete example.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:14:06]:
Let's go back to dj. So let's say I, as a teacher, I'm learning to recognize culture behavior. And DJ does that. So in that moment, I make what we recommend is catch that first thought, your deficit thought, and you go, hold up, hold up, hold up. I'm having a deficit thought. I'm thinking negatively about DJ's behavior right now. But his behavior might be cultural. So rather than, you know, immediately going to some type of consequence for his behavior, let me check my own thinking.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:14:38]:
Obviously, this takes a while to develop automaticity with it. Sure. The next thing is to ask ourselves, what culture behavior could this be? If it's cultural, if it is indeed a cultural behavior. And this is where that homework needs to be done ahead of time. Right. To learn cultural behavior. So if the teacher's done the learning, they go, oh, this is that behavior called participatory, interactive discourse or spontaneity. So it just could be a cultural behavior.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:15:01]:
So now that you've done that, here's, here's the reactive, validating, affirming, building and bridging. Yo dj, loving your enthusiasm. You're showing me how engaged you are with this lesson.
Roberto Germán [00:15:12]:
Yeah.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:15:13]:
Thank you for showing how much you're into this. Now, here's the next part. Let's say, though, there are times being spontaneous is not situationally appropriate. There are times you do need to raise your hand, but there are times you should be able to shout out. Right? And so this is where the. The bridging comes in. And what we recommend teachers to do is take a pause between these, because you have to make sure you don't say but or however. Because if you say but or however, you just negated your compliment.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:15:41]:
Right. And you say right. Now, remember, we're practicing raising our hands as a way of participating. Keep up the energy. Right. So if I put that all together, hey, dj, loving your enthusiasm. The way you're shouting out responses, it shows me that you are totally into this lesson. Remember, right now, we're practicing raising our hand.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:16:02]:
I got a shout out for you later, Right? There you go. And so now you're not dealing with that as a problem. You've reinforced it as a valid cultural behavior. And you're. You're also teaching the students situational appropriateness when there's an opportunity to do that. And we would reverse this, too. Let's say I'm doing a shout out, and I don't want my students to raise their hands. Right? And let's say, roberto, you're one of my students, and you're raising your hand.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:16:28]:
I just told everybody, hey, let's shout out. And I see you raising your hand. I'm like, roberto, I'm loving that you're raising your hand. That shows me you want to participate. Remember, right now, you don't have to raise your hand. You can just be spontaneous. You see how we. We flip that both ways so that all students learn to be what we call culturally dexterous, be able to adapt based upon the cultural needs of the moment.
Roberto Germán [00:16:54]:
Yeah, that does take work.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:16:58]:
Yeah, it does. Yeah. Yeah.
Roberto Germán [00:16:59]:
And. And, you know, folks need to be willing to put in the work. I think that's the thing. Sometimes people are looking for quick fixes. It's like, all right, just. Just tell me what to do. And it's. It's not as simple as me telling you what to do.
Roberto Germán [00:17:14]:
Yeah. I could offer some guidance. I could offer some insight. You actually have to do the work. You. You have to look within. You have to. What's the term that you had? Check, I think is the term that you use.
Roberto Germán [00:17:26]:
You got to do head checks and heart checks.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:17:30]:
Yeah. We talk about Cultural consciousness is developing awareness of yourself, who you are. Right. And so, yeah, that pre work is a teacher before they even start learning about the cultural differences of students learning their own cultural. Like, what do you, you know, you know, am I a person who thinks verbal overlapping is rude or do I think, no, it depends on the situation, right. Because, you know, or am I personally expect people look at me in my eyes when they talk to me or do I understand that in some cultures that's actually disrespectful, that if you look too long at somebody, you're now challenging them. Right. And but so teachers have to go through that process.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:18:15]:
If they do that process first, it makes that reactive, validating, affirming, building and bridging much more effective. Right. And it feels more authentic when they do it. Because, you know, when teachers have asked me and they're like, well, it feels fake. I'm like, yeah, because you haven't internalized it yet. And we all are going to go through those stages when we first do it as we're learning and we make, you know, we. But if you haven't really done that internal journey. Yeah.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:18:41]:
It's really hard to use that particular strategy both authentically and it'd be effective because I've seen it used where it just falls flat because, you know, the students are like, this sounds fake, right. And so, you know, authenticity comes with that self reflection.
Roberto Germán [00:19:00]:
Right, Right. Well, you know, thinking about processes. If educators could make one shift tomorrow and how they interpret student behavior, what would it be? What would you encourage them to make the shift in?
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:19:20]:
Again, as we discussed, there's a lot, a lot of pre work. But if we go and put something, you know, right away, one recommendation comes to mind is learning just to take a moment, right? When a behave. When a student exhibits a behavior and that part of your brain fires like, I don't like this. Right. Because we, you know, our amygdalas go off too, Right. And then we as educators go into a fight or flight mode as well. You know, in that moment, you can learn to stop the thinking, right. Disrupt any deficit thoughts and just, you know, I know Dr.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:20:01]:
Kent McIntosh calls it using a neutralizing routine. You know, we teach students to calm themselves, right? Whatever we need to do. Like, you know, before you have that, you react off your emotion, right? Stop. Take that neutralizer to calm yourself and then ask the question, could this behavior be cultural? Right. Just ask the question. And then if we start doing that to ourselves, then it can change the way we start perceiving behaviors. It's the same thing when we, when we're learning healing centered, healing centered engagement or trauma informed practices. You know, you, you know, if you haven't learned, you know what, you know, how escalating behavior due to trauma is, Right.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:20:51]:
It just looks like a bad kid to you, Right. But when you go, when you start learning what trauma does, has done to executive functioning in children, right. That, you know, when that student externalizes that behavior, maybe by, you know, throwing a book across the room, the same type of neutralizing routine, but then instead of asking if it's culture, you go, how is that related to the trauma? Right. And then we can do the same thing with, you know, neurodiversity. Right. I have a son who was diagnosed with inattentive adhd. Right. And a lot of times the negative reaction is, oh, he doesn't care because he forgot something.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:21:35]:
But that's actually a manifestation of his neurodiversity. So the neutralizing routine be like, okay, I'm having a Nevis deficit thought. But then replacing that like, oh, that's right. DJ has inattentive adhd, which is manifested by having trouble remembering things. So rather than jumping to conclusions saying, oh, he, you know, he, he is an irresponsible kid. I gotta change the way I react to him. So I see all those under the same umbrella. So.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:22:05]:
But in the work I do, it's specific to behaviors that are cultural that get misconstrued. So the teachers in that moment, again can take that moment, just ask themselves a question, hey, could this be a cultural behavior? And then that could change the way they respond to the behavior.
Roberto Germán [00:22:21]:
Yeah.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:22:21]:
Over time, with lots of practice.
Roberto Germán [00:22:24]:
Yeah, that's good, that's good, Good and important. Asking these type of questions, doing the self reflection, examining the behaviors, identifying if this is culture or not. I just doing the work. Right. This is ongoing work.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:22:41]:
Yes, sir.
Roberto Germán [00:22:41]:
You have to be committed to. And I would encourage people not to see it as an add on. Right?
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:22:47]:
Yes. And back in a previous episode, I guess you were on with your wife and you were talking about language and behavior. What is it communicating? Right. And what cultural responsiveness is doing is just bringing in another lens to that and saying, you know, what are this, you know, these, the students may be communicating that culturally. They need to be affirmed. Right. It's not attention seeking behavior or avoidance. They just saying, look, I want to be accepted for who I am and not have to leave my authentic self at the door so that you, you accept me here in school.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:23:23]:
Right. And so sometimes I believe that's what the behavior is. You know, when we say behavior is communicating culture, behavior is communicating that
Roberto Germán [00:23:32]:
for sure. For sure. So you offer us a lot of insight for those that want to dig in a little bit deeper. They want to learn more. They want to learn more about your work. They want to check out your book. They want to learn more about advocates for cultural and linguistic responsiveness. Where can they learn more?
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:23:55]:
Oh, right now they can just check me out at my website. It's CLR for us dot org. Right. So the CLR Cultural English responsiveness for and us Underserved. Right. So CLR for us dot org I'm working on, you know, the future plans of some like, you know, Instagram and LinkedIn type of content, but that's still to come. So right now it's just primarily the website.
Roberto Germán [00:24:21]:
Okay, awesome. Awesome. So listen, we. We want to continue to. To explore what Dr. Russell has to offer to learn more about the con content, to. To consider this notion of when misbehavior is a misunderstanding. We want to work on rethinking student behavior.
Roberto Germán [00:24:50]:
So please, if you following already, make sure you connect with Dr. Russell, share this episode with others. Let's challenge ourselves to. To think a little more deeply about the behaviors that we're seeing and where it is that we need to make adjustments. We need to be more informed. We need to make some shifts in our practice. Okay? So thank you for joining us today, Dr. Russell, and continue to press forward with the work that you're doing.
Dr. Daniel Russell [00:25:27]:
All right, thank you for having me on and again, appreciate this opportunity and the work that you've been doing on this show and you know, speaking truth, speaking your truth and courageously, mad respect for you.
Roberto Germán [00:25:42]:
Thank you. As always, your engagement in Our Classroom is greatly appreciate. Appreciated. Be sure to subscribe, rate the show and write a review. Finally, for resources to help you understand the intersection of race, bias, education and society, go to multiculturalclassroom.com Peace and love from your host, Roberto Germán.
