What if every student had a positive self identity? What if we thought of every student and talked about every student in a positive way?

In this video, I have a special guest because the questions I asked above are things I’m honestly not that good at doing or know how to help you do it. I’m learning right along with you in this training with our special guest presenter, Rosalba Serrano, who is helping us Recovering Traditionalists Cultivate Positive Student Identities.

This video was done live inside the Build Math Minds Facebook group in response to a hot topic that came up in the group.

Watch the video or read the transcript below:

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Check out Rosalba Serrano at ZennedMath.com

Who is Rosalba?

[Christina] As you can see, I have a guest, Rosalba Serrano is here with us. If you don’t know Rosalba, she runs the website Zenned Math, zennedmath.com, and I’ll reference that again towards the end, but if you don’t follow her, make sure you go follow her, and I’m sure at the end of this, you may want to follow her, if you don’t…

[Rosalba] Yeah, you will.

[Christina] Yeah, you will. The other thing I will say, too, is you might not wanna have kids around when you watch this video, it’s live, I don’t know what Rosalba’s gonna say, but I know Rosalba is… What word should I use? Rosalba, you’re?

[Rosalba] Spicy!

[Christina] Spicy, there we go.

[Rosalba] I use sentence enhancers.

[Christina] She does not censor herself, which is one of the reasons why I love her. She shoots straight, and she is very knowledgeable about a lot of things, but do you wanna tell people what you tend to focus on in your trainings? She does coaching, things like that, and then we will get into the reason why I have her here, but I wanted her to talk, kind of in general, about the things she loves to talk about.

[Rosalba] Well, I love to talk about a lot, as you know, from all of our behind the scenes conversation. But in my program, in the work that teachers do with me, we concentrate on three specific areas, so digging deep into the mathematics, so we’re having lessons, and really kind of building, re-framing our mindsets so we can re-frame our lessons. The other piece is effective teaching practices, and the last section that we tend to concentrate on in Zenned Math is culturally responsive teaching, so what does that look like in your classroom? There’s a lot of heavy work we need to do in that area, so we focus on that as well over at Zenned Math.

[Christina] Nice. So again, make sure you go there, join her newsletter, she gives lots of information, information about her coaching and everything there…

Thinking About the Words We Use

[Christina] So let’s dig into the reason why I asked her, as she said, we have lots of behind the scenes conversations, those of you who are Build Math Minds members of the PD site, hopefully, you’ve seen some of the videos that Rosalba has done in the site. If not, let me know, and I can direct you to the ones you’ve gotta go watch, but you hopefully are familiar with her, but one of the things behind the scenes is that Rosalba, Ann Elise, and I get to talk every once in a while about content stuff, and not just content stuff, I should say that, because… I feel like I have spent the majority of my career really focused on understanding how kids learn mathematics. And sometimes, I’m not as focused on other areas of teaching.

And there was a post that got posted inside of Build Math Minds…

The team reached out to the person who reported it, and asked… “We see you reported this, can you tell us a little bit more about why you’ve reported this, and what you saw that was wrong with this?” She had talked about how it’s really upsetting and frustrating for her to see teachers who will label students as moderate or severe or struggling, things like that, because it’s not productive. So I had to ask Rosalba and Ann Elise, what’s wrong with saying this?

Rosalba was very nice, but quick to say, “There’s a lot wrong with it.” And went through some stuff with me personally, and Ann Elise was on the call as well. And I’m like, Rosalba, we need to have you come and do this because this obviously is an area I need help with, and I have a feeling that there’s a lot of people, where we are wanting help with students and we put a label to those students so that other teachers know and can give us feedback about that, so instead of that, Rosalba, can you tell us more about… Okay, what’s wrong with that? And what should we be doing instead? Is basically what we’re gonna talk about today. I’m gonna pop on, and if you guys have questions, who are on here live, put it in the comments, and then I can ask Rosalba those questions or clarification as well. All right, thanks Rosalba.

[Rosalba] Oh, no problem.

So I wanted to just kind of touch on, real quick, that I appreciate you having me come on here after that really raw, genuine conversation that we had behind the scenes, because I think anytime I get to talk about this too, I see some areas where I need to grow and improve, so being vulnerable, and having the conversations are pretty much the most crucial things that can happen as the starting point. So thank you for letting me hop on here with you.

So I wanna go back to that statement that was said, I believe the students were labeled in that post, severe or moderate, but I wanna talk about some other terms that I’m gonna just flat out say, we gotta stop using, they don’t work, and there’s reasons behind it. So things like… Some of them are pretty severe, right? So if we say low students, my low group, we know that’s negative, right? But sometimes, it’s words that we don’t even realize, like, underachieving, or when you say, “Lack basic skills,” or if you say, “My regular class,” “I have a regular…” Like, what does that really mean? Regular? Right? So there’s other words here that I wanna bring up along the way, aside from the severe and moderate.

Now, the reason why these words really need to be removed from our vocabulary, from our school culture, all of it, is because these words are not only negative, but they’re derogatory. I want us to put ourselves in the place as if we were the children. Imagine if you were in a faculty meeting or whatever it is, and you had your higher ups saying, “Well, this is the low group of teachers,” right? “These are the teachers that…” “These are the regular teachers,” “The high, low achieving teachers.” It doesn’t make you feel good because it basically gives you limiting beliefs. Well, first, you get pissed, and then you’re like, “Why am I labeled as this?” And what happens is it goes deep into our mindset. Now, we wouldn’t like that as adults, and we’re grown people, so imagine how much impact that would have on a six year old, a nine year old. I really want to kind of hit on this session that the reason why these negative and derogatory words don’t work is because we, as educators, need to help build students’ math identity. And when we start talking about low group, even high group, what we’re doing is we’re contributing, we’re solidifying, right? What the student is going to believe in. I’m a high achiever, I’m a low achiever, right?

And here’s what I would like for us to kind of think about, consider this, this is all deficit learning, it’s all negative, right? And it contributes to a negative mindset, a negative identity, because these are the words that the children hear. It’s not words that children hear as well, it could be as simple as looking around the room and saying, “Hi, yeah, I’m in this group, and I’m always with the same kids, why am I always with the same kids?” You never have to use the word low level group or severe group in your classroom, and the students will feel it, right? The students will know. Anybody that was in one of those Red Robin groups, reading groups when they were younger, they knew that they were reading on a lower level than other students, right? So you felt this, some of us have felt that in our childhood. So I want us to also keep in mind that it doesn’t mean that you’re directly labeling students with this, but that is the vibe you are giving off, my friends, so that’s important too.

Let’s talk about how this could shift a little bit. If we know these terms have a severe impact on the student’s math identity, we’re supposed to build it up, and give them confidence. If we know that these terms aren’t really great terms to describe students in general, be specific about what it is the students need assistance with. Or need direction in.

So for example, let’s say that Declan is struggling with adding fractions, let’s say, that’s a skill, right? That is a skill that he needs support in. So if students are lacking some skills, that doesn’t automatically place them into this generalized group, they’re low achievers, they’re the low group, they’re at risk. I want us to think about how much we’re lumping in together groups, and I’m gonna bring this back actually to a lot of the racial work that I do, because some of these inequities, are what’s blocking us from actually having inclusive classrooms. We don’t have inclusive classrooms if we have leveled grouping, right? And we don’t have heterogeneous grouping. So I want us to keep that in mind, that it is not even describing the student well. You really should be describing what is the skill? What is the concept? What is the habit of a mathematician that this student needs to work on? So instead of labeling someone low-level student, or an at-risk student, or a moderate, just get to the exact thing that that student needs support in. I can say, “Hey, Declan needs support in adding fractions,” without ever saying any of those derogatory terms. If anything, that feedback is so specific that I know the exact work on what I have to do. One of the things that drives me crazy is saying they have no number sense, or no basic facts skills, there’s a lot of components to number sense, right? So what’s specifically in number sense is a student having a hard time with? It doesn’t mean that they don’t know any, or they don’t have any number sense, but again, we’re lumping and generalizing a group, or a student into a group. The same thing with they don’t know any basic facts. Really? They don’t know any basic facts? No, maybe the student is struggling with their doubles, but they know addition with zero, or addition with one.

So what this all boils down to is the shift that we have to make in education, is to stop having these limiting beliefs, stop having these limiting labels on students, and start using strength-based language, okay? Strength-based language is what’s going to help students with the way they see themselves and the way they see people, so those math identities that I was talking about…

English Language Learner vs Multi-Lingual

[Rosalba] How can we influence children to build their confidence throughout strength-based language? One piece is getting your school to shift from English-Language Learner. Now, I know that there’s gonna be some backlash on this, that’s what we’ve always used, that’s what they are, that’s what the state declares. I want you to think about the phrase English-Language Learner. Is that said, does that have a positive vibe or does it have a negative one? When you hear the term English language learners, what does that mean? That means they are not proficient in English, they have some learning to do, right? So let’s say we flipped that, a lot of people in the community want to move away from the term English language learners, and they would rather use multi-lingual students. Now, listen to that phrase, multi-lingual students, does that sound positive or negative? I mean, it sounds positive, and it’s funny, because in the coaching session, I was like, listen, on any resume, if you put multi-lingual, let me tell you, you’ll get hired, because we want to see that in the workforce, right? That’s an asset to speak multiple languages. But when we’re in school, we often hinder those students by giving them lower level task, or watered down lessons. We apply our limiting beliefs to our students that they don’t see that being multi-lingual, being bilingual, is a strength, and we need to build on that, we need to incorporate some of that multilingual piece into our lessons.

Now, I’m not asking everybody to do like, what is that called, Christina? I don’t even remember what it’s called, those learning languages programs or whatever, I’m not asking you to go out and buy one of those and start…

[Christina] Stone, or something like that?

[Rosalba] What is it? Oh, Rosetta Stone, yeah.

Yeah, I’m not asking everybody to run out and do some Rosetta Stone stuff, and learn French, and Italian, Spanish, that’s not your role. But what you can do is incorporate the students’ strengths and their backgrounds into your lessons, because what’s that gonna do? It’s gonna give exposure to the other students, and it’s gonna make the kids that are presenting it and talking about it and sharing about their background, feel pretty damn freaking good, right? Then they feel a part of the community. Then it becomes an inclusive environment. If you think about everything that we’re pitching, everything has to be inclusive, equity-based, inclusive, equity-based, do we really have that in our schools? We don’t. We segregate kids all the time, and I’m not just talking about like racial things. We segregate for everything, based off test scores, based off report cards that are biased because there’s teacher bias in there. We segregate kids all the time, and we are the ones that are putting them into these different groups that, again, are affecting our limiting beliefs and their limiting beliefs. So just the one shift from English language learners to multi-lingual students makes a huge impact in your school. And you don’t even have to say this to the kids at first, it could just be conversations within the school, principals, admin, just to get the ball rolling. And how can we take these terms and make them asset-based? Make them strength-based? How can we pull out the great things that students are doing and not the things that they’re not doing well? Because if you look at all the terms we use in school, low, low level, underachieving, they can’t do this, they don’t do this, they lack basic skills, they don’t know their facts, they’re struggling, they’re at risk, what is this?

All we’re doing is it’s all crap, it’s negative, and no one wants to hear it. No, I don’t care how much you meditate, how much you light some sage, and get some candles going, and do some relaxing work, self care, at the end of the day, those words would hurt you as an adult, so we don’t want to label our kids in this way. Christina, do you have anything before I keep going? Because you know me, I ramble, so…

Thoughts and Actions

[Christina] No, but I think… I do want to highlight something you said, because… And you ended on it, is you don’t have to actually speak the words to that child. I heard it said by  a baseball coach, that our body seeks to prove our mind correct. So whatever our mind believes, whatever our mind is saying, our body is wired to make that happen. So even if we aren’t saying these are the severe students, our mind is believing it, and so, our body, the things that we are doing, is proving that correct.

And so, even as I look back at that post that someone had put in there, labeling the kids as this, and wondering if number talks would be good to use with this group, automatically, you have that mindset of, oh, the students wouldn’t be able to do this, you know? So then you don’t even bring it to them to give them the opportunity to show whether or not they can. And even if we do bring it forward, I can picture myself, and the teacher I used to be, putting up a number talk, but in my mind, knowing, oh, these kids might not be able to do it, so I would preempt it, and try to help them along the way, by saying, “Hey, let’s solve the problem this way,” instead of giving them the opportunity to fully go through a number talk, just like you would with students that you are believing have that capability to do it.

So I feel like you did touch on that a little bit, but I really wanna emphasize it, because I know I’ve done that too. It’s like, I might think that about someone, but I would never say it to them, right? Like, that’s my mindset of anything in life, like, oh, I might think that about someone, but I would never say it to them or anyone else, I would never speak those words. But your actions will reflect what your mind believes, and that is one of the big things I really want people to take away too, and you touched on it, but I really wanna emphasize that.

[Rosalba] Yeah, and I’m glad that you brought that up, I know you found it through baseball, but that’s brain research. I mean, it’s not someone’s opinion, There are studies done on how we can… Joe Dispenza is a perfect person, not on education, he’s a neuro something. But he has some wonderful books out there, “Changing your habits to change your mind,” I don’t remember the titles, but look them up.

But there’s a lot of researchers out there and neuroscientists that are studying, how do our thoughts lead to our actions? While we think that they don’t contribute as much, it is the number one factor that contributes to our actions. So if we’re constantly putting students in situations where they are sensing, from our body, from our body language, from the words we use, from the activities we give them, that we don’t have faith in them, they’re not gonna have faith in themselves. And when you do things like give a number talk, but change it, because you feel like the kids can’t do it, now, we’re starting to get into inequitable teaching practices, right? That’s when we start breaking apart and not contributing to inclusive classroom, that’s that segregation piece, it can’t be that every single kid has a different curriculum. Now, do things need to be differentiated? Of course, right? And there’s science behind that too, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t do rich, high quality task. And what happens in a lot of these classrooms, and honestly, with a lot of marginalized groups, multi-lingual students, students with disabilities, is we feel they can’t reach current curriculum, so we… Sometimes we literally put them in separate rooms, or we have ELL teachers, whatever it is, pull them out of the rooms. They’re actually physically sometimes being separated from everybody else, and I want us to think about what that will do to a student’s mindset, that they can’t be in a class with their peers because they’re constantly being pulled out.

Again, there are studies behind how it’s beneficial to have students pulled out, but I guarantee you there’s more studies out there that say how it’s better for them to receive that extra instruction inside of the classroom with their peers, right? We have to be collaborative, we have to build off of each other, we have to be critical thinkers, how can we expect our students to do this if we’re constantly setting up our environment to be in this negative mindset? Our own and theirs, right? So your thoughts are the number one thing that’s gonna change all of this, the thoughts you use will lead you to use different words, which will lead you to provide different actions. And let me tell you, that needs to be contagious.

While I was in my coaching session, I was like, I don’t care if just one of you do it, that’s fine, but make it spread within your building. Bring to a faculty meeting, “Hey, there’s this thing out there where people are saying multi-lingual instead of ELL, let’s talk about it,” right? Gather research on that, or look it up. There’s stuff everywhere, Build Math Minds is a great resource for everything, basically, so look it up and dig into it, and bring that back to the table. We were talking about students with disabilities, and I wanna hit on that a little bit, and Christina, just tell me if I’m running long, because you know, you know how I get. But I want us to think about that term as well. Oh, I’m sorry, Christina, you have something?

Other Examples of Flipping to a Positive Identity

[Christina] No, I think that this might go with where you’re going. I know you gave that one example with changing English language learners to multi-lingual, that’s a positive identity. And so, are there other specific things that you could give? I know I’m putting you on the spot with that, but I was starting to think, like, I have a son who struggles in school, right? And I say that, he struggles in school, but what does he struggle on? And I say a lot, like, he can’t focus. Well, I need to change my own words and things, and that’s things I would say to the teacher too, when I’m talking to them, and instead, I wrote this down… He can focus on things that connect to him. Give them spit. Instead of just saying, he can’t focus, give him something positive about him that would also help instruction, right? He does well when it’s things that interest him, when it connects to him. I am saying I need to change the way that I think about that child in my own home, and the way that I talk about him in more positive ways, and so, if you have a few of those common things, like students with disabilities, and I think that’s where you’re going.

I just wanted to say this, again, is something I’m working on, and I noticed this about myself. I’m not proud of it, but we all are on different things, and that’s why we’re bringing this up. This is something that needs to change no matter where you’re at on this path, whether it’s with your personal children, whether it’s with the children in your classroom, there are ways that we can be better about this, and so, if you have specific things, I’ll go off screen again and have you share some of those ways that we are commonly talking about kids, and ways that we could make that better.

[Rosalba] Yeah, for sure. I’m glad that you brought up that example, because the focusing thing is actually one of the examples that I bring up when I talk about this subject. I’m gonna hit on two things. One is, I know you said, “Hey, this is on me, I’m doing it, and I feel bad for it, I just want…” Listen, we’ve all been there, we’ve all used these terms, I don’t care who says they haven’t, they have, it’s really important for us to take ownership of that, right? Reflect on that, check on our own bias, right? See what’s going on, and what reflection work we have to do, and changes we have to make, but not only that, we need to accept that the education system conditioned us to think this way. So that’s why I constantly say the education system is broken, because these are the things that are detrimental to kids that the system doesn’t change, and that’s why we’re required to advocate and speak up for these things to change.

Now, I wanna go to the example that you gave regarding focus, because that’s actually like something that I talk about when teachers will talk to me and say, “Oh, well, I mean, this kid has ADHD, so he can’t sit still, he can’t focus.” And I have three boys, and there have been times where I have felt, Jesus, my goodness, they can’t focus! But where can they focus? They will sit there for hours playing video games, they are super focused then. So Christina, it’s like you said, they’re focused in what connects to them and what interests them. And here’s where instruction comes in, right? If our instruction is hella boring, and we’re just following a script, and blah, blah, blah, isn’t it more likely that the students are going to lose? Or have a lack of attention and a lack of focus then? Absolutely. And some of it comes from disorders and things like that, and some of it comes from justour lessons, and we need to dissect what is it that the student is doing specifically? Hey, Tommy can focus when we’re doing… When we’re reading. He’s great at that, so there’s something that’s intriguing him there. I’m noticing he’s losing focus when we’re doing our math warmup. So then, you have to kind of dissect, what is it that’s happening during that math warmup that I’m not reaching Tommy? Right? It has to be specific, and we always have to pull out the strength from it.

We also wanna look at the terms as well, so we talked about students with disabilities, there are many people that are now using the term, neurodivergent. So a student, let’s say, with ADHD or autism, things like that, instead of labeling it as, again, a deficit, because what happens when we hear these terms? We feel something is wrong, something is wrong. And when we use the term neurodivergent, what does that show you? When you hear it, you’re thinking, oh, well, it’s just… a brain, with neurons that work a little differently, that’s it, right? And then it doesn’t become this negative based thing, because I can tell you right now, I have been to many IEP meetings, or whatever everybody else calls it in the country, where we water down, limit instruction, once they hear that label. Once a student is labeled with any of these types of neuro-based terms, basically, we automatically assume something. So we really need to shift away from those larger terms. Again, bring that back to your school district, have a conversation about it.

So how can we address when things are said about a student, like, lack of focus? Or a lack of basic math skills? I’m urging you, this is like a request from deep in my heart… Before a negative thing comes out of your mouth, jot down one positive thing that that student is doing. It’s a default, because, again, we’re conditioned by the education system, this is what we’ve been seeing for 50 plus, a hundred plus years, all this negative language, derogatory language. So our default is to say, “Oh, he can’t sit still, he can’t focus.” As soon as your brain does that, as soon as you start going there, take out a piece of paper, and jot down a positive thing that that student is doing in that mindset, or in that frame.

So let’s say the student can’t focus and is talking to his peers a lot. Guess what? Then he’s great with collaboration, right? Jot that down. And like I said before, then you get into, okay, what specifically are they having a hard time focusing on? And then that’s what you deal with. If a teacher were to say to you, “Oh, my kid has no number sense.” What does that… How do you even address that? What does that even mean? You just lumped every single category together into number sense. So even as a math coach, I don’t even know how to help a teacher that says they don’t have any number sense because there’s so many components to it. What is the first thing we’re supposed to tackle? No, be specific with what your students need.

But before you can even get there, you have to find the strength. And the reason why I’m saying jot it down on a piece of paper, is because there’s something to that tactile piece that ingrains it into our brains more. What happens is, when we don’t use that piece of paper, we naturally default over time into what we’ve always been doing. So by using a little post-it, you jot it down. It’s also great to compile, especially when you’re doing things like reaching out to parents, or having conferences. You take those post-its out about Tommy and look at all the great, wonderful things he does, because I’ll tell you, any report card, we always focus on negative things there. “Tommy’s been great this year, but he needs to practice his math facts.” No, what math facts in particular does he need to… You can’t say he doesn’t know anything, we have to stop using the language where we’re basically implying they don’t know anything, or they can’t do anything. So those are just like some terms, because what we wanna do is we wanna make sure that students are looking at their strengths, seeing what they’re doing as a strength. They should see they’re multilingual, that’s fricking amazing, good for them, that’s… They’re lucky, there’s so many people in the world that only speak one language, they’re lucky. They need to feel that, right? Because that’s what builds their positive math identity. They gotta get away from being labeled as ADHD, or… There’s a ton of different labels out there, we use them in schools. They may never hear you say that, they feel it, so we need to reframe the way we talk, the way we think, in order for us to really make a space for them where they’re building confidence, where they feel like they’re a mathematician, and where they praise the areas that they’re resilient in.

Resilient is not a bad word, like, resilient is a strength, and while you have to go through something negative in order to be resilient, we want students to learn that skill to overcome things. Mistakes are okay, you know? Like, all of that stuff that we teach, it’s funny because there’s so much professional development around that, right? Math… A positive mindset, not a fixed mindset, right?

I did a PD on this once, I hate those growth mindset posters, I hate them, I tell teachers tear it down, I really hate them. And it sounds crazy, but what happens is I think we feel we checked off a box if we put up a poster that talks about growth mindset. I’d rather there be no poster up on a bulletin board, and then you just constantly highlight growth mindset in your classroom, and what the students are doing to build their habits of a mathematician, to build their math identity. Sorry, Christina, I went off on that too, so…

[Christina] No, that’s great, that is awesome. And it’s so true because, again, you can put the poster up, you can talk like you’re doing it. When I was doing coaching as well, out in the schools, you hear them saying that they’re doing these things, but then when you come in and actually watch it, it’s like when you’re parenting, and you tell them one thing, but then you do the other. You’ve gotta make sure that both of those are in alignment. I’d rather not hear the talk, and just see it in action.

[Rosalba] Absolutely, I tell teachers all the time, if you have that poster up, and you have leveled groups, I will personally take down the poster for you, because it doesn’t make sense. They don’t align. So… And I don’t know if you have something else that you wanted to add, Christina, but I just wanna mention this one thing, because this is hard work.

This is a huge shift. This is like policies that we need to change in education, and all of it really is grounded in equity-based principles, right? When we separate kids in these different labels, what we’re doing is we’re making them feel like outsiders. And that’s not what we want. In order for this to shift, we talked about our own mindset, we need to check our bias as well. We need to see what our math identities are first, before we even do this work with students. Everyone knows this, so it’s not a secret, but English was not my first language. I’m obviously a Latinx woman, and I grew up in foster homes, like, there was a lot of things where… Girl, I probably have the most labels than of the kids in my class. And I felt that. I felt that, and you do feel excluded from what we considered the norm. But think about the position I’m in now, it took one teacher to be like, “Damn, Rosalba, that Shakespeare paper was bomb,” and that’s obviously not how Mr. Ryan said it, but it made me feel like that’s the way he would say it. It took one teacher to make me feel like, wait a second, there is something here, I have to build upon that. I was able to get out of it because I really just ignored the environment that I was in, and I was like, I’m just gonna plug away and deal with it, and that’s what built my resilience, but the issue is not many people do, right? Look at the stats, there’s a lot of people with math anxiety in America and all over the world. There’s a lot of people that don’t see the beauty behind this. There’s a lot of people that just fall into just using stereotypes, right? So if the majority of that is happening, that means we’re not doing enough work in this area.

So it starts off with you. You need to dissect, why am I using the term low level? Or the low group? What can I say instead? Well, first, how can I get rid of this low group, this shouldn’t be happening, and then, what would be my next steps here? How can I highlight students’ strengths in all of this? That should be top priority, highlight the positive. And Christina, you know me, I don’t like fluff and all that, I’m not saying that you have to like give everybody a trophy and have that type of mentality, but specific feedback, right? Like, “You’re doing a great job, great,” or, “Oh, my goodness, I love how you incorporated how to count to 10 in Spanish, and then you showed us that today, that’s wonderful.” So specific actions that the students are doing, you wanna highlight and give them positive but specific feedback for, so…

[Christina] Yeah. That’s a great tip. It’s looking for those specific things that you can highlight the strengths of the students. Writing down those positive things when we start to have that negative thought that’s coming in, and the label we want to attach to a kid. Write something positive down to change that reaction that we tend to have. And… Shoot, there was something else, I should have wrote it down…

[Rosalba] Well, didn’t you know you always carry around a post-it when you talk to me? I got a lot of things to say.

[Christina] I had the notes over here, but I sat them down. I did put my comment on here, I dragged my comment over to remind everybody to go check out Rosalba, because this is just like the top piece of it. If you need more information, and you wanna dig deeper with yourself, with your school, your district, Rosalba is a wonderful coach, she does a lot of help with me in the background as well. I just love that I can chat with her, because I don’t have colleagues to work with. But those of you who do have colleagues, sometimes you feel like you can’t reach out to them, because it does show that vulnerable side of you, and we all wanna feel like we are the best teacher, as Rosalba talked about in the beginning, we don’t want that label of that teacher doesn’t know what she’s doing, you know? So, sometimes it’s nice to have somebody who’s not a colleague that you can go to and get that coaching from that you don’t feel comfortable doing with your colleagues, or maybe your colleagues don’t know, because they are still doing those things that you wanna get away from. So I would highly suggest that you guys check out Rosalba for any coaching stuff that you might need.

[Rosalba] And I didn’t pay her to say this, guys, that’s all natural, so…

[Christina] Yeah, thank you so much. We’re friends, but I always do go to her when I’m struggling with things, and it’s nice to have those colleagues that I feel like we can bounce ideas off of and be vulnerable with. I hope that you guys who are watching this have that, but if you don’t, and you want some of that support that you wish you had, please get a hold of Rosalba. So again, thank you so much, Rosalba. And if you have any final thoughts, you can, otherwise, we will just end it.

[Rosalba] No, I really appreciate you having me on here. I honestly can’t wait to see how the group kind of takes this on, and seeing the posts where we’re finding, highlighting, and sharing students’ strengths. At the end of the day, that’s what all of this boils down to. We can still support our students without labeling them. And I just can’t wait to see the shift that happens, that’s the most exciting part about all of this, right? Christina? When there’s like that, oh, yeah, I wanna take this on, and I’m gonna start it tomorrow, or today, right? I appreciate you letting me come on here and chat about some of the things that we normally chat around behind the scenes, so, thank you.

[Christina] Thank you so much. All right, take care, everybody. Bye.

[Rosalba] Bye, everyone, thank you!

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