The Authority Podcast — Expert Insights and Fresh Ideas for Education Leaders

Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Welcome in everyone. You are listening to the Authority Podcast here on the Be Podcast Network. Thanks as always for being with us today. We get to discuss a topic that is both evergreen and timely compassion in schools. My guest is Dr. Bill Penuel. He is a distinguished professor of learning sciences and human development in the Institute of Cognitive Science and School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder.

He's also a faculty fellow at the Renee Crown Wellness Institute. He designs and studies curriculum materials, assessments and professional learning experiences for teachers in STEM [00:01:00] education, and also studies how contemplative practices and critical inquiry. Can support educators in cultivating more compassionate schools.

He also has a third line of research which focuses on how long-term research practice partnerships can be organized to address systemic inequities in education. He is co-author of a new book called Creating Compassionate Change in School Communities, leading Together to Address Everyday Suffering in Schools.

Bill, welcome to the show.

Bill Penuel: Thank you for having me, Ross. Really appreciate the opportunity to be here.

Ross Romano: Absolutely, I'm glad to be discussing this topic. And it was thinking about a lot of topical issues as I was preparing for this. And I think a great place to begin would be to give that big picture. Why does compassion matter for educators? And specifically. Why compassion And what do you mean by compassion?

I guess [00:02:00] in comparison or in contrast to empathy, kindness, relationship building other terms that we use a lot, I think when we talk about schools, but you know, some particular vernacular here and I think particular intent behind that.

Bill Penuel: That's great. Maybe we'll start there with how we define compassion and then talk about how it might be beneficial to educators.

Ross Romano: Yeah.

Bill Penuel: It's really helpful to relate compassion and empathy particularly, especially since there's a lot of talk about empathy and its value, and empathy is definitely a part of compassion, but it's more than that.

So we offer a four part definition of compassion, and I like to think of these as four parts that move into each other. So there is. The first step, which is noticing suffering. I like to say the sentence that goes with that is suffering is here. That suffering can be inside. It can be something we [00:03:00] notice in another person or group of people that are right before us and we feel that sense of suffering.

We develop then empathy, a sense of empathetic concern for that other person. Then we set a wish that we or the other person in front of us be free of that suffering, and then we set an intention that we might do whatever might be skillful in the moment to be able to alleviate the suffering. That movement between empathy and into intention and action is that movement from empathy into compassion.

That's actually really key about why compassion is a really adaptive response to suffering. And in contrast, sometimes people get stuck in empathy and they get something called empathy distress. Why is compassion beneficial for teachers? It actually helps them move through that sense that, wow, suffering is all around me.

And I notice that a [00:04:00] lot in my school environment, and you can really weigh you down to just be in that state of empathy. But really shifting into compassion means shifting into the wish that. This child in front of me, be free of suffering this parent. Be free of suffering. I be free of suffering. And may I figure out something or do something that.

Could alleviate the suffering. That is compassion. Those four parts, and our core message in the book is that compassion can help rejuvenate educators as professionals, especially in a time of difficulty, and it offers a pathway. Towards healing in themselves, healing in their immediate relationships with kids, with colleagues, with administrators, with parents, and also in the school as a whole.

Ross Romano: Yeah. What types of suffering. Did you have in mind when you and your co-authors were working on the book? Are there things that [00:05:00] are highly specific to What is experienced by those within the school community? Students, their families? Are they. Just is it one environment where similar suffering is occurring to other locations?

I'm just wanting to maybe define that, 'cause that's a big emphasis of this. And then I think we also might talk about, I, the, one of the challenges that educators seem to face continuously is that. There is a new layering of new suffering imposed upon school communities maybe that they hadn't anticipated.

Or once you think, okay, there's a lot to handle here, but at least I know what it is, something else comes in that maybe.

Bill Penuel: even know what it is. Yeah. I.

Ross Romano: But yeah. How are you thinking about that? Defining that what are some of the ways that, that suffering [00:06:00] manifests?

Bill Penuel: Yeah, I think some of it started as an inspiration, at least with teachers' own suffering in terms of their burnout, for example, that they feel, and the overwhelm that they can feel in having to take on the things that are imposed upon them. Another layer of that. I think for teachers is something that Joan Halifax and others in the helping professions have written about called Moral Distress.

When we actually see something that we think might benefit a student or a family and we're not in a position to actually help or provide the resources they might need, the compassion or help they might need, and that creates a huge source of suffering for educators who are very. Oriented towards helping others.

This happens in nursing and other helping professions as well as teaching. And that really was the start, the inspiration, what motivates our book [00:07:00] and the certificate program that we developed, that the book is organized around. Is school change. And so we borrow a concept from public health called social suffering.

And social suffering is the kind of shared experience of suffering that often happens that groups might share because of their social identities, because of systemic marginalization of some kind. That is also the result of. Policies and routines and practices that happen, and so we focus on social suffering in terms of what it is we're trying to help teams of educators alleviate in their schools.

We focus on helping them notice those forms of suffering, but also notice the roots of those in terms of the policies, routines, and practices. Two examples I'll give that I think are very accessible discipline policies. We know that. Black and brown kids ha face [00:08:00] disproportionate consequences for discipline.

There are policies and practices that contribute to that and contribute to the suffering that results from that being disproportionately disciplined. The other one that. Lots of people can relate to that also has equity implications is grading. Think about the suffering that is, surrounds the practices of grading and there are things that we can do to actually shift those practices.

We often start with those two practices actually, seeds of things that might be going on in their schools that are sources or causes of social suffering. And we also work with educators in helping see how our own attitudes might be contributing there. One of the big obstacles to compassion is the sense of deservingness.

Some people are more deserving of compassion than others, and when a kid pushes our buttons, or a kid doesn't do the work [00:09:00] to earn the A and comes to you and wants the A, these give rise to our own sense of deservingness. So I like to start, we like to start in our class with those examples because they also help us see where are we contributing to this?

Where is there a block on us showing our compassion?

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Ross Romano: Yeah. You know, that, that's an interesting point because it, does lead to the question of whether there should be limitations or boundaries set around the application of compassion and whether it's yeah, something that has to do with the disturbing ness factor or just situationally or for self preservation purposes of what are the situations wherein I can apply this effectively and feel like it's gaining and what are the times when it's overwhelming [00:10:00] to try to relate to everything around me?

And do I have to develop a sense of. Focus or you know, I mean, I don't know. How does that conversation go?

Bill Penuel: Oh, that's a great question and it comes up every time. And so in, in our book Creating Compassionate Change in School Communities, we talk about a practice that we have in our certificate program of field, noting we invite educators to actually. Take note of interactions where suffering arises, where maybe they're wondering what the right response is.

Maybe they're thinking about a compassionate response or they felt like they fell short. So we really just invite teachers to take a curious attitude towards when and how compassion might show up to grapple with their sense of what does the extension of compassion mean when a kid is. Breaking a rule, for [00:11:00] example, we also say compassion is not letting people off the hook.

In fact, if I'm an educator and I grow in my ability to feel self-compassion, I might actually be in a good place to say. To a young person or to a parent, here's how this impacted me, what just happened? And I have the confidence to be able to talk more directly about the impacts of others' actions, and also to invite repair.

So compassion goes, I think, really well with restorative practices because they are about being accountable and responsible for our actions. But also with this underlying container of we are one community. We can have an open heart, even as we speak truth about pain or harm that's been caused, I. So we have to think about that hard, and it's not easy to get to [00:12:00] these places of open-hearted accountability and open-hearted responsiveness to underlying needs that maybe somebody acting up or acting out is reflecting.

Ross Romano: What is the. I guess the most foundational reasoning to, to use in determining how educators should view their role in the reduction of suffering in schools, I guess in, in the sense of. Determining what is my job, like black and white, part of my job description. What am I supposed to be doing as a you know, as a result of having this job?

What parts of it are. Related to the service aspect of this is something that's not necessarily a base, a baseline job responsibility, right? But it's about [00:13:00] trying to do the best for my students in my community. What parts of it are. Just because it's good for yourself, right? Because it's be being able to take action or being able to Right.

Have productive outlets for the application of the care and compassion you show for others is good for one's own wellbeing, and that's reason enough to do it. I'm just, yeah. I'm curious 'cause, because I guess the reason this question comes to me is because of the. Constant tug of war that is happening with the definition and redefinition and sometimes random or unexpected determination around what educators should be doing or shouldn't be doing.

And you know, and it's like the. Demands and expectations never decrease. But one day somebody decides that you're not supposed to be teaching this or teaching that one. You know, you try to do your best to go above and beyond for a student, and then somebody either [00:14:00] decides you should be doing that, or no.

You overstepped.

Bill Penuel: Those are some of those things that contribute to the moral distress I was talking about earlier, right? When we feel a sense of obligation to teach people the truth about history or teach them about the importance of kindness, and people are telling us at school board meetings or yelling that we shouldn't do that.

You mentioned something about this is mutually beneficial and we do this because actually showing compassion helps us and helps the other person. And I think that's pretty close to the message that we offer in our book and in our course. There are three big ideas that underlie why Compassion One is our fundamental interdependence with one another.

We are in this space together. We cannot help but have our emotions. [00:15:00] Affect one another. Our words, our actions. We are in this place together. Why not approach those interactions with some degree of care, intentionality, wishing the other person well, wishing that they be free of suffering in that moment, regardless of how it's received, and it will feed us as we begin to. Really take on the, regardless of how it's received part, and say, oh, this, I can just offer this. I don't need something back in return. But this fundamental interdependence is a big idea. The other idea is common humanity. We see the other person as like us in this really fundamental sense. They just wanna be happy.

They want to be free of suffering and one lens. Yeah, for viewing activity, behavior that pushes our buttons is to say, this is an unskillful way to realize that goal for that person. [00:16:00] How can I help them become more skillful in that they're trying this? Wow. We might be pretty far from doing that effectively.

And then the last pillar that we talk about is dignity by virtue of our humanity. We have dignity as human beings. And yet treating people with dignity is something contingent di dignity is both inherent and contingent. We can either confer dignity by our interactions, show that we respect the dignity of others, or we can treat them as not deserving of that dignity.

And those three ideas are really core to helping us think about how do we show care and compassion for people who are not just. Close to and feel an easy kinship with, but to the people that we run into in the hallways, but don't talk to very much, to the people who push our buttons to the people beyond the school who might come into the school someday [00:17:00] that we don't even know yet.

These are the three pillars of kind of reminding ourselves, oh, we're just, we have this basic interdependence.

Ross Romano: Yeah. Does do compassionate people go to work in schools or does working in schools make people compassionate or both, or neither?

Bill Penuel: This is a key message that we say in our book on creating compassionate change in school communities. And the science bears this out, that humans have the, a deep capacity for compassion. We have a natural tendency that we can cover up in life to respond to other suffering with care, with help.

This is something humans do. We do get, it does get covered up by experience, by different kinds of trauma that people experience and. We can recover it and it is like a muscle we can train. So that's what our contemplative practices are partly about that we [00:18:00] introduce is the practice of compassion and like going out in the gym or you, the other analogy is brushing your teeth.

If you don't brush your teeth every day, they'll get dirty, they'll get cavities. If you don't work out regularly, your muscles will atrophy. Compassion is something that you need to actively cultivate and you do so on a regular basis. The practices are fairly simple. They do begin with a foundation of mindfulness and just attending to the present moment with curiosity and presence.

But we also introduce a set of phrases. So we first think about a being for whom. It's very easy for us to generate feelings of love and kindness and concern for many of us that's our pets have the least problematic relationship to. And we say, may you be happy, may you be at ease, may you be healthy. We then invite them to see this being [00:19:00] suffering and offer them a wish that they be free of suffering, be free of pain.

We proceed through to ourselves, which is often very hard for educators. So when you ask, is it easier for educators or harder is actually really hard for self-compassion and it's the game changer for so many educators in our course. To learn how to offer that for yourself, to stop in the middle of the day when you feel like you can't stop and realize, wow, I'm feeling pain right now.

This is stressful. And also to realize other people in this situation experience stress like me and then to wish, wow, it would be great if this suffering. I were free of it, and everybody else who has experienced this kind of suffering was free of it. And we move outward to maybe the people that we get a coffee from every day that, or in the grocery store that we see.

We don't know them very well, and we wish that they be happy, that they be free [00:20:00] of suffering. And then we finally go to the people who push our buttons. And this is where we see the limits of our own compassion. And this is what we invite people to do. It's like, it's gonna be hard. Don't pick the hardest person.

Don't start with the hardest person in your mind to offer them well wishes to offer them freedom from suffering. But this is how we develop this muscle of compassion, is to really start to work it outward from our circle of care. To extend to eventually to all beings, and that's the workout we get and it really does help it grow.

People say if you practice this with your, the person who get gets you coffee every day, you'll start to notice a shift in how you interact with them. And when you practice for a student or a colleague who pushes your buttons, the next time you see them, you'll start to notice. Oh, my heart's shifting a little bit.

Maybe the interaction's still difficult, but it's a [00:21:00] little bit different than it was. So this is how we cultivate compassion as a practice.

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Ross Romano: So the self-compassion part and I guess how to practice it and why it matters. You reference. Burnout and and kind of hope and positive action. And I think there could be different ways, different causes of that, right? I mean, there's the typical traditional burnout I think that happens in schools and but I also think there's a.

A depletion that could be a result of the the overall climate in which it feels like

Bill Penuel: and being asked to do more and more, and we are really quick to say, this is not what compassion is about. It's not about becoming even more of a doormat.

Ross Romano: Yeah.

Bill Penuel: I. Self-compassion is actually key to resourcing yourself, to developing the confidence that I [00:22:00] can touch into this pain. I can acknowledge it, I can set an intention to or just set a wish.

I'm like, I'd really like this suffering to go away. It doesn't have to be here. This suffering is optional. We also emphasize in our class. We bring people together as teams of educators because we're about changing policies that cause suffering. And some of our educators have chosen to work on projects that focus on faculty, that focus on the teachers, and resourcing them, creating better climates among the faculty by introducing these practices, for example, by focusing on broader wellness practices with each other in faculty meetings.

The idea here is yes, we do create and recreate and reproduce CLA school climates that lead to burnout, and so that's why we're focused in our book due on creating compassionate change in [00:23:00] school communities. This is not only about. Individual development. It is about, it's I, we call it an inside out approach to school change.

So it begins certainly with inner practice, but it moves outward and trying to change the conditions that cause suffering in schools.

Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. I also wonder, I mean, I feel like there can be a feeling of burnout related to the. Political climate or the attitudes that different members of communities have towards schools. It feels like a recently and frequently schools are used as a place to, to try to make an example of.

And I do feel like, I mean, and we have a lot of administrators listening and we're talking about teaching administrators. I mean, in many cases. The administration, I feel and I observe is failing on this point, [00:24:00] failing in their duty to really tap into the compassion for the classroom educators in their building.

Understand. The position they're in, the pressure they're under and not really having leadership over it. Maybe it's a need to go out and be more interactive and and have more touch points with teachers, students in the higher ed space as well. Right. With the professors and to.

To be more attuned, I guess, to the realities of that, that you know, in a role maybe that by its nature doesn't have you having the same amount of daily interaction with as broad of a group of people and and down to the student level. That. Perhaps some more intentionality around that could be part of the solution.

In cases where I do feel like the folks who are. [00:25:00] More on the lower, on the seniority level are kind of on the front lines for the majority of the negativity and the suffering and the burdens that are associated with it. Right. And that I see too many occasions I guess, where their administration is not really is not really. Stepping up and showing up.

Bill Penuel: Yeah. So first I'll say we're very lucky to work in some districts where leaders have stepped up and have gone through our cultivating compassion training that we offer. We've had principals and assistant principals and they've really talked about how this has really helped them a lot Become com better compassionate leaders.

And what you say I think is exactly right. If we think about these parts of suffering, there's some simple things administrators can do, and the first thing, that first part of definition is notice where suffering is [00:26:00] happening. And there are ways that you can do that one-on-one when you stop somebody in the hallway and ask genuinely how they are.

Check in with them, or if you notice that they're suffering, they're angry, they're crying to come up to them and invite conversation. So noticing suffering in a faculty meeting that can be as simple with the current things going on is giving a quiet space at the beginning of a meeting to talk about how something that just happened has impact, is impacting them, and what concerns they have.

I often, when I'm leading a meeting, I will couple that with a turn towards what are people doing that is helping, that is inspiring you. And I think both these kinds of moments in this time are particularly important. People need to name the harms, they need to name the experiences they have and that they're, that have been caused by.

Changes in policy [00:27:00] regarding immigrant students, for example, they also need to name and see and notice helping and what feels skillful about helping, because that's how we move from empathy because our own hearts are open. If we listen to someone genuinely talking about the pain they're experiencing towards that skillful action that is compassionate.

So help is a verb, right? You know, or care for me is a verb. It involves both a turning of the heart and also a movement into action. And so focusing on that is also important, and that's a pretty simple structure to introduce into a faculty meeting that also builds community and builds awareness, shared awareness of suffering.

Also in our course and in our book on creating compassionate change in school communities, we draw on a framework actually from organizational studies called the Compassion Organizing Framework, [00:28:00] and that provides a repertoire of compassionate actions that organizational leaders can use. One of them is about being flexible.

When there is suffering and there's something unexpected, how do we need to be flexible about how we apply our policies? That is a hallmark of compassionate organizing. How do we organize collectively a response to the suffering? How can we activate our network? So we introduce a set of strategies from this framework and invite educators to think about as in teams, what of these strategies could be beneficial in addressing the particular source of social suffering that you're experiencing now,

Ross Romano: What's challenging about introducing these ideas to school leaders, to teachers and or about putting them into practice?

Bill Penuel: I think there are a couple of challenges and one we really address directly, both in our course and in the book. That is [00:29:00] learning how to see our school as a system that is emerges from policies, practices, and routines. We tend to look at the interpersonal harms that happen as a function of personality or interpersonal dynamics.

It's harder for us to see, oh, this big thing called discipline or this big thing called the grading practice. It's showing up in our bodies as stress and suffering. It's showing up in the difficult interactions that we have with others. But then to look at that and say, oh, there's a system that's creating and reproducing this suffering day in, day out, that's hard for people to see.

So we give tools. One we call an actor network map and we say, here's the goal that we have of the kind of suffering that is in our school. Here are the people, the policies, the procedures, all the things that are contributing [00:30:00] either towards the alleviation. I. Of suffering or the achievement or hindering the achievement of some goal to reduce suffering, and that helps educators begin to start to see their schools as systems that reproduce forms of suffering that are inequitable.

The second big challenge is that sense of agency. You've been talking about how teachers. Get told they have to do a lot of things. And when you get told repeatedly that you don't feel a sense of agency, like I can decide things. So here we emphasize people working together on a team, and sometimes people come to our course as individuals, that's fine, but we're often.

They're coming in a team of three or four educators. They may be a classroom teacher, the librarian there might be an assistant principal, and we ask the teams to come up with a solution. We also help them think [00:31:00] about themselves as leaders who need to bring on allies. Who need to make convincing arguments.

We offer opportunities for them to rehearse those arguments in our course with those people who might be bystanders or even opponents to their idea for a changed policy and practice. So again, seeing the system and we try to provide some system tools for that, and then really feeling a sense of agency and we really emphasize the idea that.

As our title points to, it's about leading together. It's not about leading solo, and it's not about just me being an individual teacher, trying to change my whole school by myself.

Ross Romano: Yeah. Is there

Bill Penuel: I.

Ross Romano: a thought when you are providing trainings discussing like what suffering is, what the intentions are around reducing or alleviating suffering, how much of [00:32:00] that reduction is focused on? Things that are, I guess more like tangible versus intangible, right? How much of it is emotional and relational versus things and how does that help an educator to I guess, have a strong perspective on what they can do and what they are achieving?

Right? Because I'm sure there's times where there are. Tangible things that are not necessarily within reach but that it could there could be emotional or relational pieces that make a big difference, even if there's other things that maybe are not within my control.

Bill Penuel: Yeah, so we actually do introduce a set of tools for people to gather some data related to their action plans that they produce at the end of our capstone course. And as part of that, these are often [00:33:00] surveys about relationships and about people's sense of agency because that is a key outcome. As you're saying, like changed relationships, changed sense of trust in the school.

I. One of our teachers, Nikki, that was one of her key goals, was that families would feel a sense of belonging in their schools, and she used the district survey and traced that as part of her outcome measure to show. Yeah, by a couple of years into the project, 95% of the families are saying they feel a sense of belonging and in some sense.

While that's not a change in policy that's tangible. It's tangible in a different way, in that felt sense of I feel like I belong here and that really matters. And that's a expected outcome of a project focused on compassion. I. To really change the relationships and the quality of relationships. And I would add that's the core of what we [00:34:00] understand teaching to be to the power of teaching is relational.

It's in establishing a good relationship with students. I. Good relationships among students and relationships to the subject matter that they're experiencing. It's all about the qualities of relating and compassion is a powerful way into transforming those relationships. I.

Ross Romano: Is there a part of the program and perhaps something related to the development of self-compassion that. That has to do with, I guess, resilience in this, right? Like staying the course and, navigating criticism because I think that there's a lot of, I. There's the people on the sidelines or whatever, right?

Who it would be easy for them to say, well, this thing you're doing doesn't really make a difference. Or Why do you care about that? Why are you focused? I mean, that can really that can take a toll. And there's, so there's [00:35:00] certainly, I'm sure pieces of the act of self-compassion and of knowing one's own values in it, that would be a necessity.

Yeah.

Bill Penuel: I think part of getting in touch with self-compassion is honoring your own dignity as a person. It is about resourcing ourselves and preparing ourselves for the longer struggle towards, I. Helping our students towards promoting educational equity, promoting and eliminating sources of social suffering in schools.

We provide also the resource to teachers in the form of evidence in our book, like we present some of the research that is there to help with addressing the concerns of people that say, this doesn't matter. Because we do have evidence that it does, and it does matter for the relationships that teachers have for students, their own self-compassion matters [00:36:00] for how they interact with students.

And then I alluded to this, but one of the things that is part of the practice of cultivating compassion is this cultivation of not needing. To expect anything in return. There's a prayer that I have in front of my desk that I say often, and I say this in the class, it's May I offer my care and presence unconditionally knowing that it may be met by gratitude, indifference, anger, or anguish.

And when we start to cultivate compassion from that standpoint, not worrying about how it's received, that helps us stand up to the people who are telling us we should be teaching this or not teaching that we shouldn't be teaching people how to be kind because it's a gateway to them being offended by prejudice or harm in our nation's history.

[00:37:00] This helps us know that we're doing the right thing and to have the confidence in keeping an open heart, even as we tell those people. No, compassion is a good thing. Kindness is a good thing for us to be teaching and learning and growing into both ourselves as a school and as a school community.

Ross Romano: No. Are there any. Memorable or common misconceptions that you hear with respect to this work or the compassion in general and you know, that people think it means something that it doesn't, or that maybe have resistance toward it based on some misunderstanding of what it really is about.

Bill Penuel: I think we've already touched on a couple of them. One is that compassion and empathy are the same thing. There's often the word that people talk about, they call it compassion fatigue, and I. Compassion fatigue is not [00:38:00] actually a thing. There's something called empathy distress, where we get stuck in that empathetic feeling.

Neuroscientists have actually studied the difference in our emotional response in our. Brain response to empathy versus compassion and empathy can be over time, very draining and lead to antisocial withdrawal. That's what makes us wanna withdraw. Whereas compassion, the cultivation of compassion is resourcing.

People can feel a sense of strength and they also move towards other people, and part of it is just that intention. To say I wanna do something that is beneficial. I also attribute it to really giving yourself over to this deep wish, that the suffering be relieved somehow. My suffering. Your suffering. [00:39:00] I really wish that you were free of suffering.

And really give yourself over to that shift. That's what makes compassion resourcing. 'cause I still may not know what to do, but I'm really gonna give myself over to that wish. And that is a shift out of com empathy and into compassion. And it's what turns something that's draining into something that's fundamentally resourcing. The other is that compassion means we're letting people off the hook for things that they are responsible for. I don't think that that's the case, but it takes a lot of practice to keep an open heart and talk about with somebody else the harm that they've caused and that there might be a consequence for the harm that they've caused and that they need to make amends to someone.

Once you do that and you practice that, you see that these things can go together. I can have an open heart and still [00:40:00] speak truth to someone. One word for this that I've heard used is called fierce compassion. Fierce compassion cuts through illusion, either illusion that I have in my head or illusion about.

Whether this thing that this person's doing is gonna actually make them happy, whether this thing is a skillful way for them to be relieved of suffering. We talked about that earlier. Like if we begin with the premise that this person in front of me simply wants to be happy, we can speak truthfully about what, how, what they are doing is not actually going to lead to that.

Ross Romano: I, yeah, I mean, it strikes me like it all requires. Practice and repetition. Right. And making it a routine.

Bill Penuel: Of

Ross Romano: because like, there would be a a fair amount of discernment to know, okay, what is the right way to apply compassion in this case? What does this person [00:41:00] need in this moment? Is it that more fierce approach?

Is it something that that's a little more, gentler right now. And it's situational and it's based on individuals and you get good at that by doing it by.

Bill Penuel: back to the field noting that we do, this is part of the practice to start to notice what's skillful. And we also support educators in our course, and we review some of this in our book as well. I. Readings to help them know different kinds of skillful responses to different kinds and forms of suffering.

There is a rich literature in black Chicana and indigenous scholarship around critical responses to care. There's a notion of critical care that recognizes that the. Per young person in front of me is embedded in an inequitable system. The suffering I see reflects these different layers and the way that I need to respond [00:42:00] has to be skillful and acknowledge that.

It's really just with practice that I start to get a sense of what that kind of skill is with different students and with that particular student, because there is an individual component to this. Each child, each colleague, each parent, each administrator is a little bit different, and so I have to learn what it is.

For us to have a caring interaction for us to be compassionate in the ways that we're interacting. And that takes practice. That takes just the time of developing and cultivating warm relationships with people.

Ross Romano: Yeah. So. As we're sort of concluding here I guess a a good way to sort of wrap this up is for school leaders out there, people in positions to certainly make a difference as far as creating school communities that are more compassionate. What [00:43:00] is. One question they should ask themselves to evaluate currently, right?

The level of compassion that is being applied and enacted in their school. And then what is one. Easy or not easy, but a immediate step to try to say, alright, let's start making some forward momentum here. Here's a place to start so that we can at least begin to move in the right direction.

Bill Penuel: I think beginning with noticing what forms of suffering are present in the school, and asking yourself how do people respond to that suffering? Who is responding in a compassionate way? I. How do I support that person? If I'm a leader, how do I help other people feel like they can respond in the same way to this kind of suffering?

So it starts with noticing suffering and noticing skillful responses to suffering.

Ross Romano: Yeah.

Bill Penuel: Post [00:44:00] nine 11, Fred Rogers was asked about who to look towards. In a time like that, and Fred said, the thing to tell your kids is to look to the people who are helping notice what they are doing. And then I would add, as leaders, how do you help the people who are helping?

And how do you make it so that more people are like that? And then I would say. It starts with practice and it's, and then moves outward in our book. Creating Compassionate Change in school communities has a roadmap for how you can move in that direction. I.

Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a great starting point is take take a week to just focus on noticing what haven't you noticed before, what haven't you've been looking for, paying attention to, whether it's in individuals or types of. Suffering being experienced or in [00:45:00] how people are responding to that and taking action and what are the things that haven't been on your radar and what does that say about what can be done, should be done, needs to be done?

And it could relate to probably particular. Types of suffering that some people are noticing and observing at present that have always been there, but there's something happening that's making it more noticeable or obvious, but that it's not necessarily new, at least in the terms of how people feel it in their lives.

Bill Penuel: right.

Ross Romano: Excellent. Well, listeners, and if we will put the link to the book below, compassionate Change in Schools where you can find that. Bill, is there anything else that listeners should check out?

Bill Penuel: Yes, please do check out our website at the Renee Crown Wellness Institute, the Compassion and Dignity for Educators page. There's a link [00:46:00] to pieces on the book and also look out for opportunities to participate in future offerings. We'll be offering this summer the cultivating compassion training for educators, and also we're developing a new offering with some of our educators around critical conversations and how to have compassionate critical conversations around difficult matters.

So stay tuned.

Ross Romano: Excellent. Well, we will put the links below where you can learn more about the book and about the institute, and if you have not already, please do subscribe to the authority. We'll have more interviews with authors coming your way every week. If you, I. Subscribe and you're enjoying the show. We certainly appreciate ratings and reviews on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen.

You can also visit be podcast.network to learn about more shows on the network. If you like this show, you'll like some of the others too, so please check all of that out. Phil, thanks again for being here.[00:47:00]

Bill Penuel: Thanks for having me, Ross.