Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning

Seth Fleischauer (00:00.796)
Hello everyone and welcome to Make It Mindful, Insights for Global Learning, the podcast for educators navigating the challenges of teaching in an unpredictable world. When engagement feels harder, cultural divides grow wider and outdated systems resist change. What really moves learning forward? That's what we uncover here. I'm Seth Fleishauer, former classroom teacher turned founder of an international learning company specializing in the teaching of global learning.

Each episode features change makers offering bold ideas and practical solutions to make education more relevant, impactful, and human. And today's big question is, can schools really provide meaningful mental health support without overburdening teachers? Some of the things that schools are struggling with are the questions of like, how do we address student mental health without overstepping our role? Are we opening a can of worms by having these conversations? How can we equip teachers to facilitate discussions?

they aren't trained for and all of that is going to be discussed within the experience of our guest today, Dr. Haley Watson. Dr. Haley, thank you so much for being here and welcome.

Hayley Watson (01:05.614)
Thank you so much, it's a pleasure.

Seth Fleischauer (01:07.9)
So you are an expert in adolescent mental health and the founder of Open Parachute, which we'll be talking about here today. You've developed a groundbreaking documentary-based mental health curriculum designed for real classrooms, one that doesn't just add to teachers' workload, but actually empowers them. And I would love to unpack that, but let's tell the story first of how you got here. How did you end up founding this product, this service, that leverages the experience of students' peers

to teach them mental health skills. How did you end up here?

Hayley Watson (01:40.79)
Yes. So I was working as a clinical psychologist and seeing teenagers and kids and their families one-on-one. And it really struck me how that just isn't enough. There are so many kids that are never able to see a psychologist. There are so many barriers. There's so much stigma as well. And then even the kids and the teenagers that I was working with, you do all this fantastic work.

but then you're sending them back into their peer group that doesn't have a level of self-awareness and doesn't know how to help themselves or help others. they, teenagers and kids, developmentally, they really listen to that peer group or they're exposed to it online. And so there's too much coming at them for a one hour once a week, you know, for maybe a few months or a year therapy intervention that just doesn't.

Seth Fleischauer (02:12.21)
Hmm.

Hayley Watson (02:36.546)
work to turn the tides. And I really always had this burning passion to make an impact and to really figure out, you know, how can we do this differently? How can we set up a culture that doesn't, you know, just give a tiny little intervention once there's already a really big challenge? And so that sort of led me to working with how do we focus on prevention? How do we get

in there early and how do we teach everyone instead of just those ones that have the privilege of being able to access services or the ones that are really, really, really at their worst? What would happen if we started teaching this to kids when they actually weren't in a bad place? What would happen then? And so the journey of actually using pure voices came from my clients because I started posing this question to teenagers.

What do you think would help this situation? How do you think you could get your peers involved? I, you know, being the archaic person that I was, was like, maybe we could write, I could write a book. And all of my teenage clients said, do not, yeah, what's that? Yeah, don't write a book. No one is going to read a book. And they said, start a YouTube channel. And I was like, I know nothing. At that point, I literally didn't even have a social media account. And I was like, I...

Seth Fleischauer (03:47.538)
Kids love books. They love long-form media.

Hayley Watson (04:04.362)
Okay, fine, I will try. So my first point of call was, well, I'm not interesting to listen to. So why don't I interview some teenagers? You they're the ones that kind of have things to say. And as I was interviewing them, I was so blown away by the wisdom that they were sharing. And I was like, you and this generation as well is really comfortable on camera. I was like, there is no way when I was a teenager, I would be

able to express myself that clearly and be confident and want to express myself to the masses. And so that's when I started to go, OK, this you guys need to be the ones that are speaking to the next generation. And so then I started trialing it in schools because, of course, schools is the one place where you can do prevention. You have everyone there. It's the reason why we use schools to

make sure we don't have an illiterate population, to make sure that people understand basic health concepts. And so I started bringing it into schools and the peer voices just, and we can get into sort of the why that is and developmentally, but they speak to the kids in the classes. And so they were able to watch their peers on screen and they were like, yes, I would listen to this. I want to learn this way. And so it really was guided by

teenagers the entire time and kids saying, you yes, I will listen to up here and this is how I want to learn. And I think that's the thing that I've always really been aware of when we think about how we create interventions for young people. It's usually a bunch of academics off in a, you know, ivory tower, creating really well thought out, well researched interventions. There's a lot of fantastic interventions out there, but there's not a lot of involvement in

the perspective of the people that are being intervened on. And I think that's what I always really wanted to do is make something that kids will listen to and kids will take in and in a way, in a medium that they want to engage with. Because if we don't do that, we're kind of just coming in and placing our adult perspective on saying, you should do it this way and this is what you need to learn. And it really work that way.

Seth Fleischauer (06:17.008)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (06:23.344)
I like that phrase being intervened on. Like that must be how most teenagers feel about these interventions that we come up with.

Hayley Watson (06:32.428)
Absolutely. Exactly. know some of the kids that I used to work with, I lived in London for a while and I worked with kids that were really disenfranchised and in need of serious intervention and needed to be seeing psychologists and they had no interest in seeing psychologists. They were like, absolutely not. That sounds like the worst thing ever to sit in a room with someone and talk about myself. No way. But what they would show up to is

a sports game where you could have a chat with them and you could kind of talk about some things that were on their mind or a fun activity or a group where they're chatting to other people their age. And that's really what kind of those experiences where I sat in rooms of teenagers that were like, no, not not that, but but here make it creative, put some effort in and then I will participate. You know, then I can. No, exactly.

Seth Fleischauer (07:20.114)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (07:26.064)
Yeah. Talk to a psychologist. No, but, make a video and put it on tech talk for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it makes me think of like, like sometimes this isn't the problem with, with my daughter. She's very open with me, but like a lot of parents have a hard time hearing from their kids. But if you like do carpool, that's like a tip, right? Like just let them talk to each other in the back and you'll learn everything that you they'll forget that you're there and they'll learn. You'll learn everything you need to know.

Hayley Watson (07:30.702)
Exactly, exactly.

Hayley Watson (07:43.33)
Yeah. Yes. Exactly.

Hayley Watson (07:52.254)
Exactly, exactly. You don't need to push against the grain. We can get creative here. Figure out what is the medium? How do they want to communicate? How do they want to open up? And let's work with that.

Seth Fleischauer (07:56.497)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (08:02.29)
Yeah. And there's a couple of things I love about this story. First of all, this idea that like, um, therapeutic interventions become less effective because you send them back into the world where people aren't getting therapy. Like that's, I love that insight. Um, you know, it reminds me of like, Oh, we have project-based learning period embedded amongst our like tradition, the other, you know, 39 hours that are all traditional education, but we have project-based learning period.

Hayley Watson (08:16.047)
Yeah.

Hayley Watson (08:28.078)
100%. Yeah, so you get that, right? You can think that way. Yeah, exactly.

Seth Fleischauer (08:31.856)
Yeah, yeah. But I so I love the idea that it has to be it's a cultural transformation. And so it has to happen at scale. And so you've leveraged the asynchronous nature of documentary style disclosures that students can can learn from, can can see themselves in.

Hayley Watson (08:49.867)
Yes.

Seth Fleischauer (08:54.93)
You've leveraged the I love how organically it came out of your initial work where they are they were telling you This is the way that it needs to go and you teased out this idea of it being developmentally appropriate I want to call back an episode of make it mindful that I did a while ago with a dear friend of mine. Dr Adriana Galvan. She's now the Dean of students at UCLA, but she was an adolescent psychologist and she has taught me a lot about

Hayley Watson (08:55.086)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Watson (08:59.672)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (09:24.824)
her research and what she's learned about like they literally like adolescents literally like the part of the brain that takes like feedback from social groups is like twice the size three times the size of it as it is for for like normal adults right and like even like my daughter is just on the cusp of adolescence experiencing that right now and she started to stay up later and she talks to me about how sorry Adriana talked to me about how

Hayley Watson (09:30.254)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yep. Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (09:54.438)
teens stay up later for a reason. And it's because like evolutionarily, they were, that was the time when they got to experiment being the adults, right? Because the little kids and the adults are all sleeping and the teens are awake in this, you know, relatively safe, but somewhat risky circumstance of being up and alone. And they're the only ones who are, who are awake. And, and that idea of like sort of

Hayley Watson (10:03.374)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Hayley Watson (10:12.654)
Yeah.

and

Hayley Watson (10:19.245)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (10:22.338)
doing it together and experimenting with it like the risk taking behavior that is amplified at this age because you're learning how to assert yourself. But you tease this idea that it's developmentally appropriate for teens to learn from each other as opposed to people who are intervening on them. And I imagine it has somewhat to do with the things that I mentioned, but can you unpack it a little bit more? Why is this your approach?

Hayley Watson (10:26.67)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Watson (10:31.244)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Watson (10:38.754)
Yeah. Yes.

Hayley Watson (10:48.256)
Absolutely. So when you think about survival instinct, if you think about the goal of a teenager, the goal of a teenager is to be able to figure out, like you were saying, how do I survive in this world when my parents aren't there? And really just from a practical standpoint, their parents are a generation that's going to pass away. So they are literally going to have to survive without them. But before that, they're going to have to move out.

and they're going to have to sort of figure out how do I navigate this world and guess who is going to help them with that? Their peer group. So if they continue and that's why teenagers always separate from their parents and often there's friction in those adolescent years, they have to pull away, they have to figure out how can I be an independent person, but we're not independent people. We do need others. And so the others that they start to look for are...

the people their age who are going to be there hopefully for their whole lives and who are going to help them navigate the moving out, all of the challenges that that incurs, whether that's starting a new job or starting college or whatever it is, there's going to be peers that are around for that. So that's why their brain naturally, and the research you mentioned is absolutely correct, they start referencing their social group. So their social learning, their social interactions, that becomes paramount because

in order to survive in the world that they're about to enter into, if they don't know how to navigate their peer group, it's going to be a really, really rough go. And so that's why they are so impacted by social media. That's why they are so impacted by their friends. That's why you hear kids doing things and you go, why? Why would you ever make that decision? you know if you had them one-on-one, they never would have made that decision. But because they're in a group,

Seth Fleischauer (12:32.018)
Eating Tide Pods? Why?

Hayley Watson (12:41.826)
that group think and that, know, someone was doing something awful, but I didn't say anything because I don't want to disrupt them or I don't want to upset them. This is why that's so challenging in those years, because everything in them, their survival instinct is telling them you better fit in or you're not going to cope. You're not going to survive and you're not going to thrive in this world.

Seth Fleischauer (13:04.571)
Yeah. So that's the why, part of the why, of why this works. How does this work? Right? So like I'm a teacher, is this like a software that my kids are engaging with on their own? Is this something that I help facilitate? We talked about empowering teachers. How does this empower them? How do you, and I think embedded in that question is also this idea that we as adults, we are people that have our own mental health struggles.

Hayley Watson (13:09.613)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Watson (13:31.565)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (13:32.37)
probably were not taught anything like this when we were in school. Maybe it does feel like opening up a can of worms schools are very sensitive places nowadays. You don't want to like say the wrong thing and get fired or have a kid like pull out their phone and you say something and it's in the school board meeting, right? Like, so how do you empower teachers to navigate that in the context of what you're providing?

Hayley Watson (13:36.151)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Watson (13:41.864)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Hayley Watson (13:50.178)
and

Hayley Watson (13:55.872)
Absolutely. So I think the main, the beauty of using a student voice is that we're not talking about in each lesson. in order to answer that first question, the teacher is logging into the platform and they are facilitating the lesson. So that's a really important part of our resources because if we are, if students are logging in themselves and they're interacting themselves, we're not giving them the opportunity to

practice the skill set. And that's really what the goal of the program is, is to teach a skill set. So just in the same way, you wouldn't teach a gym class and get every person to do their own thing. You'd get them to do something in a group, because part of the learning is how do I interact with others in a social way, in a whatever way, while I'm exercising? Because we don't necessarily, we have to figure out how do I do this collaboratively?

And so many of the skills that we need to be teaching are about communication and interaction. So, you know, how do I, as a teenager, know how to set a boundary? How do I, as a teenager, know how to say something doesn't make me feel good? How do I ask for what I want? How do I communicate when someone's hurt my feelings, et cetera, et cetera? All of these things need to be practiced. And so the teacher is facilitating, what's that?

Seth Fleischauer (15:13.466)
Yeah, I'll say so. I would say, yeah, I I'm just thinking as an adult, I'm like, yeah, okay, I'm working on all that stuff. Setting boundaries, like how do I express my feelings or hurt?

Hayley Watson (15:21.006)
Exactly, exactly. So this is, this is a hundred percent. This is the part that I love about it is that yes, we do all need to practice this. This is not something we have dialed as a culture at all. And the reason we don't have it dialed is because we never learned it. And the thing I think we forget about when we, know, of course it's anxiety provoking thinking, how do we start teaching something that we don't really know? But if we don't teach this skillset, we're going to keep

bumbling along as a society. All of us confused and hurt and not sure how to navigate social interactions, not sure to navigate our own lives, not sure how to make decisions that are right for us. And so it's kind of worth the effort, I would say, to really try to get in there in the muck and say, how do we do this differently? But so in order to answer your question of how does this work, the teacher facilitates a lesson.

And the beauty of using a student voice is that, so in the lesson, a video comes up on screen, they show their class, and it's a story of a real student, not actors, really authentically sharing vulnerably, hey, this is what I went through, this is what happened, and this is everything from simple friendship challenges. In our pre-K, it's somebody took something without asking, those kinds of things, all the way up to, you know.

I was offered a substance and I didn't know what to do, or I was anxious about a school test, or I went through this really hard thing and I didn't know how to cope with it. And it's important to also know that our resources are separated by tier one versus tier two, three. So the classroom teacher might choose, you know what, I'm only going to be talking about things that are pretty simple.

very related to what's going on in class and I'm gonna let the counselor run a group where it's a little bit more targeted and talking about bullying or those kinds of things. So there is, that's an important element of it. But the beauty about the story is that then we're not talking about, hey guys, let's talk about stress and anxiety, go. We're like, hey, let's learn about this person. Let's learn about Casey. Let's hear about Casey's story.

Hayley Watson (17:33.952)
Let's reflect on Casey's story. Let's talk about what Casey did to help himself. Now let's practice that skill ourselves. So for the teacher, it's very gentle. They don't have to be an expert. They're just hearing a story and we're talking about a real human experience. And then we're practicing a skill and the skill that we practice is a really easy skill to navigate. So maybe it's a skill of deep breathing. Maybe it's a skill of changing our thoughts.

Maybe it's a skill of standing up for ourselves. Whatever it is, it's, again, it's a human skill. When we think of mental health, sometimes we get overwhelmed because we think it's this huge, dark, scary, intense thing. And yes, there are elements of mental health that are really scary and intense, and that belongs at a tier two, three level. But there is a really basic skill set of being in contact with our feelings, thinking critically about situations, knowing how to...

Seth Fleischauer (18:09.734)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Watson (18:31.63)
calm ourselves down and soothe our system when we're overwhelmed and choosing helpful actions. These are basic skills that we all practice on a day-to-day basis. So those are the skills that really belong in the classroom that when teachers actually start using our resource, they very quickly realize, okay, this is not as scary as I thought it was. And actually, I am able to teach these skills. And the empowerment piece is

All of our research shows the teachers start feeling more comfortable. The teachers start being able to navigate those challenges in class because teachers can't get away from mental health. That's the challenging situation we're in. We can't only do mental health at a tier two, three level because a student is gonna come to class and they're gonna melt down in the middle of class or they're gonna yell at the teacher or they're gonna be too stressed to be able to take their exam and that teacher is going to have to deal with it.

So when we're teaching a skill set, that means that that teacher is able to say, hey, we learned about this. Why don't you use one of the strategies we learned about instead of being stuck like a deer in the headlights saying, I don't know what to do here. And I have to deal with you and I have to put out the same fires again and again and again. What we're providing is a structure that the teacher can draw on and that the students can start using.

so that we start to get into that sort of preventative space where everybody shares that language and knows how to respond when something happens that is impacting a student's mental health.

Seth Fleischauer (20:03.986)
Yeah, I mean, I love the idea that the teachers are learning alongside the students because of course they are because we never got this instruction when we were younger, And I love the combination of teaching through narrative for a human skill that is so dynamic, so nuanced, right? Like part of the reason why narrative is such an effective

tool for getting at these deeper issues is because it relates something personal, which then feels like it's not like there's a right answer here. It's like we are navigating this together. We're sharing how, that makes me feel this about my experience. this is like, I think about, I have a book club at my company, some of the deepest conversations.

Hayley Watson (20:42.946)
Yes.

Hayley Watson (20:46.443)
Yes.

Hayley Watson (20:50.998)
Yes.

Hayley Watson (20:57.822)
Yes. Yes.

Seth Fleischauer (20:58.214)
Because it's mostly novels, right? So like like Barbara King Silver said something like, know, you go to Nonfiction for knowledge and you go to fiction for truth or wisdom something like that But like, know what you what you have are stories, right? It's really about stories more than anything else and and there is that there's that truth in stories because it's not nailed down Right. It's not like it's not like this is the thing you have to do. It's like here is someone's

Hayley Watson (21:07.47)
Mm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Hayley Watson (21:21.963)
Yes.

Seth Fleischauer (21:25.06)
lived experience that you cannot say is not their lived experience, yet how you interpret that experience is different, is going to be different for everybody.

Hayley Watson (21:34.414)
Exactly. And it's a springboard. And like you said, and this is the challenge with mental health, is that there isn't a prescription of one thing. Our mental health is unique. We all have a mental health. And it's related to our own experiences, our own traumas, our own inspiration and joy, and all of those things. so teaching a skill set is really about that exploration. Can we create an environment where young people are comfortable looking inward?

Really, that's the goal, right? Because if we're comfortable looking inward, anything that happens that triggers us or makes us upset, we can deal with it because we can reflect and consider and notice. And this is what we have to do because life is messy. And there isn't just, OK, that happened, therefore you need to do x, y, z. Maybe.

Today, you can do X, Y, Z, but tomorrow you need to do A, C because you're in a different head space or something totally different happened. And so it really is a really interesting and bizarre skill set, but it does require, just like what you were saying, just the reflection of let's consider what people go through and let's reflect on how we might be able to relate to that. And this is what brings people together when you think about the division in our world. There's so much of...

my way and you're wrong. And how much of that is just fear? You know, I'm scared of what's different from me. I don't like this feeling that comes up when you're speaking and I don't understand you. So I'm just going to put a wall up. How much could we break that down if we were able to be a little bit more authentic and a little bit more curious about ourselves and other people?

Seth Fleischauer (23:19.45)
Yeah, there's so many skills that go into being able to be there, right? And that's another thing that I like about your approach is that it is embedded in narrative. is intensely personal, yet there are also some skills here, right? There are some things that we can try to do. We can name our feelings. We can seek other perspectives. Some of these just basic ideas, really.

Hayley Watson (23:24.461)
Yeah.

Hayley Watson (23:35.843)
Yes.

Hayley Watson (23:39.182)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (23:47.138)
that you can apply to these stories. You've mentioned a couple times this like wisdom that comes from these peer documentary resources. I'd love to hear some of them, right? Like what are some of the amazing things that you've heard from kids?

Hayley Watson (23:49.859)
Yes.

Hayley Watson (24:06.286)
Oh my gosh, kids are so amazing. It's so phenomenal when you ask, when you give a space and you ask a young person to reflect the things they come up with are just, let's take your breath away. So, you know, people often ask, like people often say,

are these actors because how are they so wise? And the answer is absolutely not. It's literally, and I did all these interviews myself, so it's literally me just asking questions, but really wanting to know about their experience. And so some of the things that they say, like when you ask a simple question like, okay, you went through this situation, how did it impact you? Or what were you thinking?

when that happened or what feeling came up or why do you think you acted that way? Really simple questions in one sense, but it's like they've never considered it before because people don't usually ask those questions to young people, know, those reflective spaces, but even a child who's never thought of it before. So obviously some kids have been in therapy or they have parents that talk to them like this or they do have a peer group where they're talking about this, but.

But what always floors me is when you ask this question to someone who you can see has never thought about before, and they're able to really truly dig deep and give you this brilliantly honest, vulnerable answer. Like, I lashed out at those people because I was feeling insecure, because I'd been picked on for

you know, having a learning disability. And it might take you a while to get there. You know, I'm thinking of one teenager specifically where the whole first part of the interview was just combative and like, you know, whatever, you know, I hate kids and I hate school. And, and then this is the this is the piece she comes out with was, you know, and it took a while of asking, did something happen? You know, are you you know, what what's your relationship to school? But then she got there and

Hayley Watson (26:21.504)
I just remember this piece where I said, you know, do you, do you wish people saw you differently? And I, and she said, I wish people knew that I wasn't an aggressive person. I'm not an aggressive person. I wish people saw that I'm just sad. And it's like, I goosebumps even thinking about it. And this is a kid who, if you asked any of her teachers, any of her peer group, they would say, cause at school she presents as I don't care.

I'm aggressive, I don't care about anyone, I'm probably rude to people, I probably bully people. And so the world is seeing this version of her that's not her true authentic self. But when she's given this space to communicate authentically, she wants to share her true self. And that's the part that always just makes my heart break, but it's so beautiful and this is what we need to show young people. We all have that. We all have this facade that we show the world.

that's the way we think we need to be in order to be safe or to be accepted or whatever. But underneath that, we're usually pretty different. And part of the journey of being a human is to get more and more in contact with who we authentically are and be okay with accepting ourselves and all of our flaws. And the challenges we come into are because we can't do that. And we keep, you know, pretending and being someone else. And that can lead to really, really dark places. And so...

Hearing that this the truth I think is the part that just is so just heart-stopping and so powerful because then that voice can be heard by all of these other kids that in class might go. wow, either I might be a little bit like her and I might actually be more sad than I realize or Wow, I didn't realize that that kid that's a real jerk all the time might be a little bit sad. It's those, you know

aha moments that can only break through when you hear an authentic voice. You can't sit down and say, hey, know, people who are angry or sad underneath, you can say that, but are are teenagers gonna listen? What they're gonna listen to is a real story of someone going, this is my actual honest truth, even though I'm showing this other part of myself.

Seth Fleischauer (28:42.32)
Yeah. Okay. I have a question brewing and it's going to take me a little while to get there. So bear with me here, but it like, it has to do like one, one thing I'm struck by is you're getting these incredibly raw, vulnerable moments from people. And I imagine it's because of your relationship with them. Like I see it in the person that you are, like just the person that you present. You obviously care a lot about this. You are welcoming.

Hayley Watson (28:48.546)
yours.

Seth Fleischauer (29:11.396)
you're, you're generous with your energy. And I imagine that that's part of how you found success in therapy in the first place and in mental health. and I imagine it's how you were able to sit there with someone for 45 minutes and get to that final place where they can say something deep and authentic and vulnerable. and, and one part of the question is,

How do we prepare teachers and this is that can of worm question right is like how do we prepare teachers to? Build the kinds of relationships they need in order to get students to be authentic And to create the kind of culture that you need in a classroom to make people feel comfortable Disclosing things about themselves in that peer group that they are hyper sensitive about the perception that they are present that

that their peer group is having of them. And then I want to dovetail that with this question about like the Jungian shadow, right? So like this idea that there are these parts of ourselves that are rejected, that for whatever reason our parents, our peers, our society, they're parts of ourselves that are not accepted by those people. And so we reject them.

and they still live inside of us and they often come out in other ways. You had the example of the student who is sad on the inside but is angry or aggressive in the context of her school life. And so that sad part might be that authentic self. For some people, that authentic self might be something that isn't accepted by their peers. And how do you, like, does that

heart does like, is there room for that in what you're talking about? Is there room for this idea that like, I, my authentic self is someone who pisses people off, right? Who, who like, who, who, says uncomfortable truths to people, right? Right? Like, like these things that are that there's sort there are all these rules in society for like how you do that. And, and maybe my authentic self is that I don't follow those rules.

Hayley Watson (31:20.394)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (31:31.92)
Right? Like, is there room for that and how do we create the culture? What kind of relationships do we need to build in order to make room for that sort of thing?

Hayley Watson (31:31.982)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Watson (31:44.206)
Absolutely, so I'll answer the first part of your question first. There's a really important distinction in our program in that in the classroom lessons at a tier one level, it is actually not a group therapy session. So the teacher doesn't have to create that safe space like you said, that is the value of the video because we've done that in a one-on-one.

Obviously they know it's being filmed and they want it to be filmed and they want it out there, but they're in a safe space when they're talking. The value of that video is it's planting the seed. So in the classroom, the teacher is not asking people to disclose. Nobody's really sharing their deepest, darkest truths because most classrooms, that's not okay for most kids to do that. And it's not okay for most teachers. Absolutely our resources can be run in...

Seth Fleischauer (32:24.146)
Okay.

Hayley Watson (32:36.564)
environments where they have that kind of relationship and they are wanting to go there and they have that training and all those things. But this is the beauty about what we're doing and why we can do it at a tier one level. The story is the seed planter. It's that opening of, here's an authentic version of someone that maybe is new to me or maybe I never thought of. And then I'm going to practice a really simple skill set.

So maybe the skillset is around critical thinking. Maybe the skillset is around accepting our authentic selves. Maybe the skillset is around expressing emotions in different ways. But the skillset, that's the part that is actually pretty accessible. And it's not even that deep necessarily. It's just, okay, we've heard this really powerful, profound story. And again, I shared a really big one, a heavy one, but a lot of the times it's,

hey, you my friends are doing something that I don't wanna do, but I feel a little bit awkward about that. I really like playing soccer and they really wanna just hang out at lunch. And it's this weird, awkward dynamic where I feel like I'm ditching them every time I go to play soccer, but this is my passion. It's like these human things that kids go through. So, but whatever it is, it's just the opening. And so that means that the teacher can facilitate a lesson.

on a skill set that relates to that. And those kids that really need to hear that message and it really opens something up in them, those are the ones that go to tier two and tier three and they can process it. And that's one of the beautiful things about addressing this at a tier one level. You start to see pretty quickly which kids really need a little bit more support because most of the time we keep a lid on it. But if we start opening these conversations up, we start to see, that student looked a little bit upset.

this is probably hitting a nerve for them, that means they need to get some more processing around it. That's not my role because I'm a teacher, but hey, now I know which student to refer. So it is a really kind of contained way that we're able to do it. then over time, we have, if we think of starting, so we have pre-K to grade 12, if we think, if we can get lots and lots of students at a pre-K level teaching this and lots and lots of teachers.

Hayley Watson (34:59.214)
sorry, learning this, and lots lots of teachers teaching this. Imagine in 20 years when you have an entire cohort of teachers and students who are used to self-reflecting, who are used to thinking about this stuff, imagine the world we would live in. So we're not trying to solve that whole thing right now. We're starting really basic, but I imagine and I predict and I hope that in 10, 20, 30 years,

we're gonna be having a very different conversation because we're gonna be talking about cohorts of kids that really have a developed skillset around this and then we can go deeper. Maybe in 30 years, we can have group therapy sessions in classrooms. I don't know, maybe it'll take 100 years. But the idea is we're not there yet and so we start with this skillset. And then the second part of your question I love because absolutely.

Seth Fleischauer (35:41.138)
Facilitated by AI. Yeah.

Hayley Watson (35:53.87)
And this is kind of going back to that first thing you were saying earlier where there's not a this is what you should do formula for mental health. It's about getting comfortable exploring ourselves. And so one of the big pieces that we do in our program is let's look at ourselves in all these different ways. Let's look at our thoughts. Let's look at our thoughts in this situation. Let's look at our feelings about something. Let's look at our reactions about something else. And so

Again, it's not a right or wrong. It really is about how can I know myself? How can I know when I'm impacting other people negatively? But then also, how can I know when I'm being really authentic? And sometimes those things coexist. Sometimes people don't like who we are, and that's a really important lesson.

Okay, so maybe those aren't my people. Maybe I need to find other people that I don't rub up the wrong way so much, or maybe I need to recognize that in some situations I can tone it down and that's okay, as long as I know who my authentic self is. And then also maybe I don't want any friends and it's more important for me to be authentic. There's no right or wrong, but I guess the skillset that we can teach is a skillset of can I feel my feelings?

Can I notice my thoughts? Can I change my thoughts when it's important to? Can I choose actions that work for me? Can I redirect if something's not working? This is the basic skill set. And that's something we can actually teach in a really, really simple way. And then it's up to the individual to apply it and to maybe go deeper in a therapy session or whatever it is that they do. But if we don't start with a basic understanding,

Seth Fleischauer (37:31.889)
Yeah.

Hayley Watson (37:37.528)
Kids are just floundering like all of us were, right? Like we don't learn this stuff until we're adults and we're going, my gosh, like why am I making all these decisions? And why is my life not really the way I wanted it? Like this is how we find ourselves as adults. What if it didn't have to be like that? What if it was a skillset that we could start thinking about when we're 12? know, I wonder who I am and who I wanna be and who I wanna be friends with and all of those things I can just think critically about instead of just.

blindly going through life until we hit a wall and then we have to, you know, figure it out.

Seth Fleischauer (38:08.976)
Yeah, Well, people call it a midlife crisis. I call it a midlife opportunity. I would like to think that the opportunity will still be there even greater when you've been trained for 30 years of how to do this work. there's something about being midlife where you have this perspective of looking back on the first half and asking yourself, which parts of this do I want to keep? And so I imagine that that'll still happen.

Hayley Watson (38:17.646)
Yes.

Hayley Watson (38:32.43)
Yeah, yeah. And I would argue, yeah, you can do that earlier, right? Imagine if you were 13 and you could look back on your, you know, when you were 12 and go, hmm, I wonder what parts of that I would keep. Like, how powerful would that be? Like, yeah, of course we'll be doing that our whole lives, but we kind of don't do it at all until we hit midlife, which is part of the problem.

Seth Fleischauer (38:38.267)
Yeah, along the way.

Seth Fleischauer (38:46.182)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (38:50.258)
Yeah, okay. So some of these questions that we had at the top of like, you know, how do we address student mental health without ever overstepping our role? Are we opening up a can of worms by having these conversations? How can we equip teachers to facilitate discussions they're not trained for? It's all kind of answered in that last response there, right? Like this is a can of worms that we're opening and then we're putting a lid back on it, right? Like they're, they're...

Hayley Watson (39:13.676)
Yeah, yeah, we're opening it in a contained way. to that question, I do have another response as well when we think about, are we opening up a can of worms? I think what we really need to seriously reflect on as a culture is we know what happens when we don't open up that can of worms. Rates of youth suicide, school shootings, all of these things come from a lot of really heavy stuff going on in kids' lives, and they have no outlet.

No one's asked them, no one's given them an opportunity to process it. So not to be kind of doomsday about it, but if we don't open up the can of worms, what's the cost? And if we do, of course we have to do it in a contained way. have to all those things that we talked about, we have to make sure we're being smart about it and we're being contained about it. But we also have to be a little bit brave to go into this space that we're not that comfortable with because...

Otherwise, what is the outcome we're allowing for these kids and for ourselves? It's an oblique one.

Seth Fleischauer (40:17.052)
Yeah. Well, I think it's obviously very important stuff. mean, you just mentioned some of the consequences of not addressing this. know, open parachute feels like a service that that could fit in a lot of places. If I'm a teacher and I'm like, I would love to have this, but I imagine it's purchase. it like a classroom license? Is it a school license? Like, how do how do I convince the person with the purse strings to to to consider this?

for my classroom.

Hayley Watson (40:48.108)
Yeah, so we usually work at a school or district level, but it always starts with a passionate teacher or a few teachers that are willing to trial it. So that's the way in is we always offer a free trial. So people can try it, they can see it, they can see for themselves the impact it's making. And it really does start at a grassroots level. You kind of have to tackle it from the top and from the bottom at the same time. So of course somebody needs to pay for it, but...

If it's driven by passionate educators that are saying, need this, the whole thing can come to fruition a lot more easily. So you need the leadership in a school and in a district to have this vision and to value this. Of course you need that, but you also need those educators to say, I wanna try this, I wanna see what it's like. And then once they're doing it, it's that beautiful ripple effect that other teachers go, wait, what are you doing in your classroom? Or I see the impact that you're having on your students.

and it grows from there. really, you know, whoever at any level is passionate about this, can start there and it can grow organically.

Seth Fleischauer (41:55.868)
Beautiful. Well, that is a call to action. I would say also, you know, even for people who for whom the purse strings are not going to work out this time, I there's a lot of wisdom just in what you've presented here today and a framework that we can use to to open the can of worms carefully. Well, Dr. Haley, thank you so much for being here. Is there a place that you'd like to send people to find you and your work on the Internet?

Hayley Watson (42:15.576)
Yes.

Hayley Watson (42:25.57)
Yes, openparachuteschools.com will give you all of the information. You can sign up for a free trial there. And then if you want to connect with me more personally, Dr. Haley Watson on LinkedIn. I love connecting with educators.

Seth Fleischauer (42:39.62)
Awesome. Well, thanks again for being here. Thank you as always to our editor, Lucas Salazar. For people who would like to support the podcast, please leave a rating or review. Tell a friend, follow us. And remember that if you would like to bring positive change to education, we must first make it mindful. See you next time.