Transformative Principal

Welcome to Transformative Principle, where I help you stop putting out fires and start leading.

I'm your host, Jethro Jones.

You can follow me on Twitter at Jethro Jones.

Okay.

Alright, welcome everybody to Transformative Principal.

I am very excited to have on the program today, Hilda Guerrero, and we are going to talk about her new program called Peacefully Productive Kids.

Don't you just love the sound of that?

do.

So Hilda is a second grade teacher still in the classroom and seeing amazing results with her students about, with this stuff that she's doing.

So, Hilda, why don't you start by telling us what, peacefully productive kids is and, and what your idea is for it.

Well, hello Mr. Jones.

Thank you for having me on your show.

I'm so grateful for this opportunity.

Bear with me.

It's my first interview and so thank you.

Thank you.

So yeah, I am a school teacher.

I've been teaching for 28 years.

And as many teachers with those many years of experience, they would all agree.

We definitely have seen a decline unfortunately, in children's social, emotional, mental wellbeing.

Most especially post pandemic and all of these growing concerns has compelled me.

To create a solution, at least be a part of a solution of, what many of us are experiencing in the school setting.

And so what, what is it?

What does a solution look like?

Give us an overview of what you envision and what you're doing in your classroom right now.

Well, what I, what I, what I envision is, children that.

When it comes down to social and emotional wellbeing, I, I see children with a, growing needs and knowing how to emotionally regulate and also have, stronger connections with their peers and have that so, emotional resiliency.

So I started to create.

Materials to help foster that growth.

And it started back about three years ago when I was given a student who, at the time was one of the, the highest challenges in our district.

He would leave the classroom quite a bit eloping and had emotional outbursts, and definitely a situation where I felt.

You know, extremely challenged on how to deal with that.

So I knew right off the bat I needed to learn, I needed to learn and become the teacher that he needed.

And I started to read books.

I started to watch videos.

I, it turned out to be the process of a case study.

I would read, I would learn, I would implement strategies, ask, you know, check in with myself every week, what worked, what didn't work, make the calibrations that I needed for the following week.

And it evolved into creating resources and also collecting resources to help this little guy, be successful in the classroom.

Yeah.

And you are not alone in having students in front of you who are struggling mightily

Mm-hmm.

You know, when I was a principal, I faced this.

I have, my oldest daughter has a disability and she has kids like this in her classroom, on a regular basis.

And, you know, she gets very upset when those kids have emotional outbursts

Yeah.

or when they run away or whatever the case is.

And so this does affect, affect other kids.

And the thing is, is that not all of those kids.

Actually have a disability.

And, some of them have mental health challenges and some of them have trauma, and some of them have all kinds of different things that are contributing to it.

And, and we don't know all the underlying reasons why, but we know that they need support.

And, and anybody who's worked with a very highly challenging student, knows that you learn a lot through that process as you did.

absolutely.

so tell me what, what these resources are and what they look like.

And then, and then we'll shift into some of this idea about how to get this stuff built and how to get people engaged in the process with you.

Okay.

At first it started out looking for information that's already available.

What resources, what videos, read alouds, different resources that are already available, pulling those together and then creating as I went, specifically speaking towards that child, he was diagnosed with oppositional defiance disorder.

So I started reading about that and learning how can I help this child?

And it led me to a book that is actually written for adults, Steven Guy.

He wrote a book called Elastic Habits, and he takes this idea of how to, effectively build habits and with, with this idea that when you start with the goal being so small, it's almost impossible to fail.

Sort of like the book Atomic Habits and build from there.

Then you may have more, success than if you have a fixed goal and you know, not succeed and eventually.

Quit over time is what a lot of the pattern is for most people trying to make changes.

As you know, the New Year's resolution goers that start a goal in January, they're usually done by February.

So I took this idea, I created a chart, created resources, and started to track his behavior.

Because what he was doing is anytime there was anything academic that was required of him, he would shut down.

And so I started making the goal so ridiculously simple.

Starting there.

And the idea is once you break out, break through that inertia, and you've got momentum going, now you can challenge the child a little more, a little more.

And one example with that was with writing, he had such a high resistance with writing that no one even knew if he knew how to write.

And he was already a third grader.

He refused to put a pencil in his hand.

So I started baby steps one step at a time and then had this chart to track.

His progress and over time, by the end of the year he was writing multiple paragraphs, just using that one strategy.

So, and I can, you know, with the eloping what I learned about that many times.

hold on just a sec.

Okay,

let's go back to that

sure.

this gets to the productive part of peacefully productive kids,

Yes.

and there is nothing that builds confidence and capacity, like actually succeeding at something that is difficult for you to do.

Right,

Absolutely.

this is a, a, it's like a, an engine.

You know, you turn it on and sometimes it's cold and it's really hard to get it started.

But once it gets going, then it goes and it gets better as it gets warmer.

And with kids when they're struggling with something.

The self-confidence that comes from a kid actually doing something that they thought they couldn't do is just huge.

And so it, it's not surprising to hear that nobody knew he could write to him writing paragraphs because he saw this small thing that he could do to figure out how to become better at that.

And then.

You know, with every kid, once they see what they're capable of, then the training wheels can come off and they can do really amazing things and,

Yes.

so important because too often our interventions.

Or about getting them to be compliant.

But that is not rewarding.

feel good to be compliant.

It feels good to be productive and create, we all love that.

Yeah,

feel good when we do

that's right.

are just being compliant.

No,

feel good.

no.

good to be productive and helpful.

So, so sorry to interrupt,

No, it, it's exactly what happened.

Absolutely.

It's exactly what happened.

The more he succeeded, the better he got at succeeding.

Mm-hmm.

exactly what happened.

It turned everything around in the right direction.

And another, challenge he had was eloping.

So I did my research.

What causes that?

I need to get to know him before I know how to help him.

I started researching, found out often cases, if they come from, backgrounds of abuse, he's.

He's adopted, so he's been through a lot and, found out that, a lot of reasons is because when a child is experiencing excessive times and durations of, in this fight and flight mode.

They're in this perpetual state and anything can trigger for them to run.

They just, so what's the antidote?

What I learned, and I started, I started reading books on trauma, watching videos, and what I learned was antidote is to consistently, in a very compassionate, gentle way, let him know he's safe, he's okay, he's gonna be fine.

I'm here.

I care about you.

Just consistent, soft, gentle messages over and over, and over.

And within a month he stopped eloping.

And

That's great.

within a month.

Within a month.

And this was su such a drastic change that I had.

A fellow teacher asked, Hey, where's that little guy that would run around all the time?

Everyone knew him.

It was a little guy that would run around all the time.

Did he move?

No, he's still here.

He's in your room.

He's not running, so they didn't know.

And it's, it's all just took on my part, finding the information I needed, starting to implement the strategies that I was learning and they were working.

And, I kind of said the story backwards because once I got him in my room, then I thought, okay, he's in my room.

How do I educate him?

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

His, his, because quite honestly there was so much of education that he missed because of the challenges that he had.

Right.

And so then I thought, okay, his two struggles within the classroom were emotional anger outbursts and the, defiance disorder, which I've already discussed.

So with the second struggle of emotional outbursts, what I started to learn from that through the research that I was reading and learning and studying, is, what they're basically doing is expressing an intense emotion, but in a different way.

Right?

So when I see a child acting out, when I see a child throwing something or kicking or screaming, I don't see a child with bad behavior.

I see a child who's in distress and needs to learn the skills on how to release.

The emotions are feeling in a different way.

So one day I sat with him, I showed him two images.

I showed him an image of a geyser from Yellowstone.

I showed him another image of this gentle, serene scene of water seeping out from the earth.

And I asked him what's similar, what's different about these images?

And he knew that they're both images of water.

Being released from the earth, but obviously done in different ways.

And I said, this is what I'm observing.

You're, there's, very appropriate if you feel anger about something that is a normal feeling and the need to release it is also very normal.

What I'm going to do is I'd like to show you a different way to release those emotions.

I said you willing to try and, I mentioned to you that I have a master's degree.

My background is language development.

I spent many years being a bilingual teacher, so I've learned a lot about language acquisition and the stages of teaching language.

And the reason why I bring this up, because I started to see this correlation early on, that social and emotional wellbeing, there's a direct connection with their ability to communicate how they feel.

And if I can give them the language skills that they need, then perhaps they can speak and articulate how they feel in a more peaceful, gentler way instead of these emotional outbursts.

And that's exactly what I started to do.

I started to teach him language frames, associated with emotional, language and social language and giving him these phrases and say, try this instead.

And I just, all year long started to give him words.

And so, as you would know, those emotional outbursts just faded away.

Why?

Because I equipped him and I empowered him to speak and release his, his intense emotions in a different way.

And, and that is the key to what pretty much everybody needs.

Is they need to be able to express themselves and say what's going on so that the frustration or pain or whatever that they feel can be released in a way that is appropriate for their environment wherever they're at.

Exactly.

it doesn't matter if it's in the classroom or somewhere else, I'm sure that his behavior is improving.

In other areas as well.

So you have this one student that taught you all these things, but now you're applying this to the rest of

Yeah.

in the classroom, and now what you wanna do is, is create this peacefully productive kids and have other people experience it also.

So, so what does that look like as you're trying to develop this, outside of just your classroom?

Yeah.

Since then, what my, the work I've learned and implemented with that one child a couple years ago, it's definitely grown.

I see the work I'm doing is, addressing the three tiers of kids with social emotional needs.

A tier three, a tier two, a tier one.

So I, I do one-on-one, intervention interventions with kids that need that level of one-on-one.

Attention.

And then I have a small group that we call a friendship class where I pair students that have high social emotional needs with students that have low and for different reasons.

I'm teaching them how to regulate self-regulate emotionally.

I'm also teaching them interpersonal skills, how.

To resolve conflicts and we do role playing and, and that sort of thing.

And what, what's also grown is now teaching, sort of tier one level, whole group lessons on three main components, which is mind, heart, and body.

So any and all themes associated with growth mindset.

Then any and all, themes pertaining to their emotional wellbeing and the, you know, relationships and human connections, which is part of the Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Very important.

And then the body, it includes self care, also the need to take care of yourself.

Those are the three main components, but without, of those components, there's, I have over 50 different topics or themes that branch out of those three.

yeah.

Well, and you know, and everybody listening knows that.

It's, each one of those things has many different

Mm-hmm.

it,

Absolutely.

So the mind has what you think about and what you get your mouth to actually say, and how you respond to criticism and to positive reinforcement and all that kind of stuff.

And your body is not just about self-care, but also about controlling your

Mm-hmm.

using your body.

And the way that it needs to be used, throughout whatever instance you're coming up against as a child in a school.

Mm-hmm.

so, um, yeah, I like that a lot.

what does this look like for someone who is, who's a teacher and is like, Hey, I need peacefully productive kids, so I go to peacefully productive kids.com.

What are they gonna, what are they gonna get from there?

Well, one of the main reasons why I started to create this is probably out of my own frustrations in finding materials and resources that I need.

And when I did a lot of it, it good material, however it was, a lot of work to prep.

Sometimes the preparation for the lesson that's described takes longer than the actual teaching of the lesson, so that's when I thought, okay, I need to create something that is teacher friendly that, very minimal preparation required.

My goal is within five clicks that a teacher will have resources right there at his or her fingertips.

To teach on any topic, any theme, and of course teachers can use it, how they see is needed within the dynamics of their classroom.

Some teachers might find it beneficial to go from beginning to end through the different topics.

Some might say, well, we're dealing with this issue in class.

What's the lesson I can just teach within minutes to address?

A certain topic and when they click on that certain topic, they'll find a plethora of different resources.

Videos, journal prompts, lesson plans.

I'm just creating dance, music, poetry.

I'm a big believer in poetry because of the benefit that Pro achieve provides, if they can recite poems they can remember, that will help them remember positive messages that they need.

To pull up in times of need.

I'm a, that's part, a big part of the program I'm, producing is this whole issue of helping children with negative self-talk or I guess combating against negative self-talk.

I think the latest research is like 90 something percent that we talk to ourselves negatively, and what can we do to help steer that in a better direction, to help teach mindfulness, to help them to be aware.

They're actually talking to themselves in a negative, demeaning way and how to pivot.

So we work on that a lot.

And so all of those resources would be made available.

I think a really big component that I just started developing, pools in from my background of language development, I do see.

Language as the pathway towards social, emotional and mental wellbeing.

And it correlates.

The stronger a child has skills to communicate effectively how they think and feel and the, the more adept they are to resolve conflicts with peers or even family members in a peaceful, respectful way because they have the language to do so.

I think, the stronger they, you know, their developmental growth would be.

And so I'm teaching them language frames on what to say.

If I can just share one example about that.

With the groups that I'm teaching, we do a lot of role playing and, I had in, in sharing and expressing these language frames and I had a mom recently in a conference saying, you know, I.

My son used to be sort of feisty and snappy, and something is changing about him.

He even talks differently.

And I said, well, tell me what that means.

She said, well, something's actually shocked me.

And I'm like, well, can you give me an example?

She says, okay.

Well, I was coming home from work a little flustered, frustrated, something went wrong and at work, and I just shared a little bit about what happened, and my son, seven years old says, I'm really sorry.

To hear that you went through that mom, I, I would be really bummed out too if I went through that and she, she, she, she said, I'm really sorry to hear you went through that.

You experienced that.

I, I can see why you were bummed out about that.

I would be bummed out about that too.

And she just stepped back and thought, who, who is this talking to me?

Right.

Just the words that he's using.

And I just smiled and I said, that's the language I'm teaching him.

They're called words of Empathy.

I'm teaching them how to be good listeners.

I train the students to be active listeners.

Oh my goodness, I have so much to say about that too.

With the friendship class.

Can I tell you another story?

Yes, please.

So we have this growing problem of kids coming back after recess.

Every time someone's crying, something happened, something went wrong.

And they're all screaming at me trying to tell me all at the same time what went wrong.

So I thought, all right, what if I equip and train the kids?

You know how to be better prepared for recess?

Right.

So we went over conflict resolution strategies and because unfortunately what happens, a lot of kids that are good, well-mannered kids, they're easy targets for those that have bully tendencies or tactics, and they go through a lot and they come back crying and they've been wounded.

So I started teaching them, conflict resolution strategies of the words like being assertive, having the courage to speak your truth in love.

And also, providing a win-win solution so that the, and and repeating back what the person says so that they feel heard and all of these strategies that, that I was teaching them and.

One day the counselor comes up to me and says, you're not gonna believe what I witnessed on the playground.

She said, I saw a fight brewing between two fifth graders and the, tensions were rising and they were exchanging some quite colorful words with each other.

And, crowd was gathering around them.

And not to solve anything, but to basically be entertained by it.

But then here come your little second graders.

They come in and they're in the circle, and I see one of your students tap this much bigger kid and said, you know, I know what you can tell him so he doesn't keep getting more mad at you

That is.

Great.

I love it.

and this.

And then they're probably a foot apart in, in height, and he looks down at her and I guess he's open for the idea.

So she gave him the words.

She says what you have to address, she goes, I don't think she used the word address.

You have to first say what he's feeling, what he's thinking, so that he knows he's being heard.

And here's what I heard him saying.

So she basically guided this kid how to, basically mirror what this angry boy was trying to say.

And when he did that.

Another little girl in my class tapped on the other kid and says, now here's what you can say in response, right?

And, and between these kids, they actually resolved the conflict, the tensions went down and they were able to, avoid or help avoid these two kids going at it physically.

And I thought, wow, what if.

What if we raised or taught a generation of children that were well skilled and well trained on the right language?

The words to say, how to let people know, I hear you.

How to let people know I care that this resolution is, is one that you also agree with, and to be able to resolve conflicts.

On their own.

Not that they wouldn't need the assistance of adults, I still think adults should be in the know of what happened, but just empowering them that they can do that as well.

They, they have the skills.

They, if they're, if they're taught, they can be,

That they certainly can,

yeah.

we.

The thing, one of the, the problems that we're facing in our society now is that kids have no unsupervised time and there's an adult involved all the time, so they don't have opportunities to develop these skills.

And adults are constantly intervening and getting in the

Exactly.

figuring it out on their own.

Now, them figuring it out on their own is not always the best decision

Mm-hmm.

that's where fights and injuries and bad things could happen, but at the same time.

We need to equip them with the skills that they don't have to go to an adult to get things fixed.

And you know what you said about kids coming in after recess and talking about all the drama that's going on out there?

That is such a pain for every teacher to have to deal

Yes.

really the kids need to figure out how to do it on their

Yeah,

that is a life skill.

That, that they will benefit from

absolutely.

in, in their families, in their work experience with their adult friends as they get older.

If you can't do that, then you're going to be emotionally scented for your whole life, and, and it's really difficult for, anybody if that's how you are.

If you don't know how to interact with others,

Mm-hmm.

don't know how to.

Do conflict resolution, then it's, it's gonna be tough.

Absolutely.

These are life skills

yes,

they need to learn now, and it's, there's so many benefits to that.

When children can resolve things, like I said, still inform teachers of what happened.

I think that's a really important component to make sure that's always in place.

But however, more time for teachers to teach because they're not having to put out so many fires at the end of each recess.

And now it's gotten to the point where if a student comes back and they look distraught from that group that I teach in the morning, I have taught them to be what we call friendship helpers.

So I'll just say, if little Johnny comes in upset after recess, guess what?

I basically dispatch a friendship helper, let them have that conversation.

They're fully trained.

We are at, I think, six steps on how to be an active listener for someone who needs to air out whatever they're feeling and thinking at the time.

And do you know what that has done?

It's cut out.

I would say at least 90%.

Of me needing to resolve conflict for these kids, and it helped me.

It made me wonder, imagine, imagine having schools where students are so equipped, so empowered to resolve conflict that teachers are no longer or adults seen as the sole problem solvers, right?

Yes.

This is so key, Hilda, because I, I was going to say I disagree with you.

The, the adults often don't need to know, and

Oh.

we only think that we need to know because we think we need to be the problem solvers, but the reality is.

I don't ever have to hear about an issue on the playground that was resolved appropriately and both people feel heard and respected.

I don't even need to know about that as the teacher or the adult.

And what would be so amazing is if later I. They say, remember two weeks ago when we almost got in a fight and you're like, wait, what?

As the teacher?

And you're like, what is going on?

And they're like, and we resolved that and this is how we resolved it.

And being able to talk appropriately and in a healthy way about that, that it's not that somebody is.

someone, and now you need to be quiet and not let the adult know what's going on.

No, this is about kids actively resolving their issues in an appropriate way that helps both sides understand where the other person is coming from in a way that is better than most adults.

Al even know how to act themselves.

Wow.

Teachers don't even need to be involved.

Wow.

take the teacher

Yeah,

if they're resolving it appropriately, then.

Then there's no reason for you to be involved

Yeah.

The only time, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Well that's really what we're trying to teach them to do.

Teach them to be able to manage these things resolve them themselves because that's the skill that's going to serve them well throughout their entire life.

And that's way more important than a lot of other things that we spend time on.

But if you never have to deal with one of those issues again because the kids are resolving it, that sounds like a dream to me.

Well, I'm only asking to be informed after the fact because I guess I just have this concern that if there was an issue that came up that.

Adults should know about, and I do give them parameters and I give them if.

If there's any issues that come up within this range, I definitely need to know about it.

Perhaps a principal needs to be called as well, so just for my own.

Concerns just, just to be informed about it.

Not that I need to go and follow up or anything like that.

If they resolved it, they resolved it, let's move on.

But I just think that it's so powerful that they are learning these skills at such an early age and giving them that competence that they can, they just, it, like I said, I come from a language background and so much has been done to support, second language learners with academic language.

Perhaps we need to have that conversation about what are we doing to support their emotional language, their social language, giving them those interpersonal language skills and

I, I really agree with you on this, Hilda, because that is where the problems really happen.

The academic stuff, they'll figure it out eventually

mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

they're not going to want to figure it out if they hate coming to school.

I.

Yeah.

they can't connect with any of their

Right.

and I, I do believe you've tapped into something really powerful with that approach, that we don't just need to give them the academic language, but we need to give
them the social and emotional language to manage conflict, to resolve conflict, to be an active listener and to participate in those discussions so that it's not just.

I don't know what to say and so I'm just angry and I start swearing to my native language at them,

Right.

isn't helpful either,

No.

'cause even if you can't, even if you don't understand that, you still experience the anger and frustration that kid's feeling as the other kid.

And then you don't know what they're saying and you assume the worst and all that.

And, and that's not helpful either.

So I, I think that's really powerful.

Yeah, it addresses the needs of the breakdowns in communication that mostly happened.

Typically you have children or people in general that like to stuff.

They don't talk about what they're, until things get out of hand and they express their feelings in non-productive ways.

And then you have some that, as I mentioned earlier, that they wait till they explode.

And then it's just this explosive expression of what they're feeling.

And when it comes to students that need more courage, that's what we talk about.

And I think also when you give students this understanding that I am pairing you with someone who will listen to you, who will validate what you're feeling, who will, basically mirror what you said so that you feel heard.

Then they will be more likely to open up because that's what they, that might have kept them restricted is, you know, what I say will fall on deaf ears.

So I think both is important.

Teaching students how to communicate effectively and teaching students how to listen.

Actively with empathy.

And I think when those two are going strong, I think that will be make such a huge difference, not only just in their social emotional, but the impact that it will have on their academics.

Because we all know that when kids feel better, they do better.

Yeah.

I, they do.

So where, where do you need help with this from people who are listening to this podcast?

What are the things that are gonna be beneficial for you to, to serve people more effectively?

I.

Well, what I was mentioning before is that as I create, the more I realize that this.

Product project is bigger than me and I could sure use some help and support.

I envision seeing a team of people that are like-minded, equally passionate about, creating something for students, for teachers, and if I had a team helping me, complete building and those that are knowledgeable about how to get the product out there and.

Collect data to get feedback from people that would try the product out.

There's so many steps that I'm learning of what it would take to get from creating the product to then testing it out, collecting data, using that data as anecdotal evidence, and then presenting it to people that may want to use it in their classrooms.

So there's a lot of, just basically support.

I think that would really be beneficial at this point.

Yeah, so this is a fantastic idea of, of helping people get on the same page.

I love the name Peacefully Productive

Hmm.

People can go to peacefully productive kids.com and connect with you directly there and get in touch and say.

can I help?

And then they can start participating.

And so I invite everybody to do that.

Who's interested in this?

I know a lot of you out there are, and this, this idea of having kids be peacefully productive is, is definitely something worthwhile.

Anything else that you want to add to that call to action?

Yeah, it's, I just wanna reiterate that my main goal is to make the product teacher friendly.

I personally know what teachers are going through.

I think the best two words to describe an experience of teachers.

We are undertrained and outnumbered and asking teachers to do one more thing and one more thing on their plate, might not be initial, initially inviting.

And that's why my main objective is to make it so user friendly.

Just a few clicks away, they can get to the resources they need to help educate students to give them the skills that they need.

And, I already know that.

They'll see changes in their classroom and it will only inspire them to keep using the product because, our district has many resources and I'm grateful for what they have provided for us thus far.

However, I just think more is needed and I feel that the product that I'm creating is filling in some gaps of what I feel is also needed for, for teachers and students.

So.

Again, I'm creating this for kids, but I'm also creating this with teachers in mind as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

So if, if this is interesting or if you have a particularly hard case or had a particularly hard case this last school year.

Go to peacefully productive kids.com, reach out to Hilda and get, say, here's what I'm struggling with, and

Hmm,

help you get the resources.

absolutely.

Hilda, thank you so much for being part of Transformative Principle.

Thank you.

awesome chatting with you today.

Thank you so much.

Oh, it's awesome having this conversation.

I really appreciate it.