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In this episode, I’m borrowing research and strategies from the fields of counseling and psychology to help educators apply healthy relationship concepts in school communities. Specifically, we’ll explore how Gottman’s State of the Union meeting is relevant for educational spaces like classrooms and staff meetings.
Why? From Dr. John Gottman and Robert Levenson’s research on thousands of married couples, they were able to predict which couples would remain married vs. get divorced with 90% accuracy. Why? During a conflict, happy couples had a ratio of 5 positive interactions to 1 negative interaction. To help couples reach and maintain this 5:1 ratio amidst conflict, Dr. Gottman developed a “State of the Union” weekly meeting structure. We’ll unpack that below with applications for educational settings. As you review the following steps, consider your role in education and which type of setting you are most likely to use this structure.
What are the steps to the State of the Union? Step 1: Start with 5 appreciations Identify a specific value, characteristic, and/or action that a student or staff member demonstrated in the past week. Share this with them, and repeat it 4 times. (If you’re facilitating a group, you may point out 5 individual actions or highlight 5 things the group has done. You could also have participants turn and talk to a partner so each person received 5 appreciations specific to them.) I like to use VIA’s character strengths for a vocabulary bank. Step 2: Praise what’s going well If student-led discussions are a priority this year, share positive feedback from students or your observations of what is going well. If you’ve been struggling to improve everyone’s capacity to listen deeply, share how you’ve specifically witnessed it get better. You could also generally point out who’s doing amazing things. (Example: Kaya’s class is doing fantastic with asking inquiry questions this year. If you have time, stop by a launch lesson!) Step 3: Process a challenging incident or issue Partners may alternate sharing. In a group setting, you can also invite participants to each share an incident. Throughout, Gottman encourages non-defensive listening and empathy. The goal is to seek to understand. As the sharer, share your emotion, the specific thing that happened, and your need. You may use the sentence stems: I feel…about _______. I need… For example, in a situation where a teacher is talking 1:1 to a student about an incident, the teacher may say: I feel worried about you when you are not in class. I need you to tell me why you missed my class so I can help you succeed. Step 4: What can I do next week to make you feel more loved? Invite ideas from one another (or all participants in a group setting). Each person asking what they, individually, can do to help one another feel loved demonstrates a commitment to their own responsibilities for and clarity on the goal—all people should experience love. Final Tip Make this a routine! Schedule it into your lesson plans, your PD calendar, your team meeting agendas. If weekly doesn’t work, try monthly. You don’t have to wait for the SOTU meeting to share appreciations with one another. Embed appreciations into your regular practice too! To help you build a sustain a culture of belonging with your students or staff, I’m sharing my Staff Meeting Agenda Series with you for free. (You can use the same activities for students—one learning model for all!) And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 176 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:01 - Lindsay Lyons I'm educational justice coach, lindsay Lyons, and here on the Time for Teachership podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting, because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal assistant, superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerding out about co-creating curriculum with students, I made this show for you. Here we go. 0:00:39 - Lindsay Lyons Welcome to episode 176 of the Time for Teachership podcast. In this episode we are bringing in some research and strategies from the fields of counseling and psychology to help educators apply healthy relationship concepts in their school communities. Specifically, we're going to look at Gottman's State of the Union meeting, which he counsels married couples to engage with, and we're going to talk about how it's actually relevant for educational spaces like classrooms and staff meetings. Here we go. So let's get into why you might want to have a State of the Union meeting for your class or, if you're a leader, for your staff. Let's first look at the research. So, from Dr John Gottman and Robert Levinson's research on thousands of married couples, they were able to predict which couples would remain married and which couples would get divorced with about 90% accuracy Mind-blowing. During a conflict, they watched people basically work out a conflict for about 15 minutes. I think they would observe how many positive interactions that a couple engaged with in that time and how many negative and happy couples had a ratio of five positive interactions while negotiating conflict to one negative interaction. And when I think about the number of times I interact one-to-one or even large group with students, like as a teacher, how many times do I interact with every student right, and how many times was that interaction positive? How many times was that interaction negative? I think about the number of touch points that families have with educational institutions and their children's teachers, how many of those phone calls home where those outreaches are positive and how many are negative. When I was being trained as a teacher, a lot of it was, you know, the positive sandwich, for example. So here's a positive, here's the challenge, here's like where I think we're going and how you know this kid is going to do. Well, that's still only a two to one ratio of positive to negative. It's not enough, which is mind blowing to me. So there's a lot there. That's kind of the foundational level of this research. But then to help couples reach and maintain the five to one ratio amidst conflict, which is of course inevitable in partnerships, in romantic relationships, in family dynamics that are non-romantic, in classes, in staffs, right, like yes, this happens, conflict, yes, we know this. So to help everyone maintain the five-to-one ratio, dr Gottman developed a state of the union, what he called state of the union weekly meeting structure, and so we're going to unpack that today with applications for educational settings and I want you to think about your role in education. As you listen and think about this, which type of setting you're maybe most likely to use a structure like this. So if you're a leader, for example, you might use something like this with a whole group in a staff meeting. You might use it in one-to-one meetings with teachers, so this might be something you call supervisory meetings, mentorship meetings, coaching meetings. If you're an instructional coach, or even if you're the principal, but you have a coaching relationship Facilitating a leadership or department team meeting, have a coaching relationship facilitating a leadership or department team meeting. It might be in resolving conflict with a colleague or a student, either colleague-student conflict or your conflict with a colleague or your conflict with a student. Similarly, for teachers, this could be that you're facilitating like a lesson with your class, so a class circle, maybe an advisory period, you know whatever it is. It could be one-to-one or small group conferences with students inside or outside of the school, like class lesson. It could be during a department or team or PLC meeting time with your colleagues. It could be you facilitating a student-to-student conversation about a conflict, like a restorative conversation, for example. It could be you again resolving conflict yourself with a colleague or yourself with a student. So a lot of different opportunities I think for this here and it fits most naturally, given that partnerships or romantic relationships that Dr Gottman designed this for a one-to-one, when you have scenarios that are you and another person right, or you're facilitating a conflict resolution process with two people one-to-one right. But I do think there are still applications and general principles that we can use for those larger kind of class-wide or staff-wide opportunities. So keep whatever lens or opportunity for this to be used in your role that you would like in your mind as we go. So what are the steps of the state of the union? Here we go. Number one you start with five appreciations. The very first thing that you do when you're doing your weekly check-in is you say here are five things I appreciate about you. Now I typically with my partner, we usually do this we go like one-to-one, like I'll share one, he'll share one, one, one right. So you can do that. You can also share. Here's my five, here's your five. Doesn't really matter, but what you want to do is identify a very specific value, characteristic or action that a student or a staff member demonstrated in the past week so it's got to be recently, particularly if you're doing this every week. If you're doing this a little bit more spaced out, like once a month, okay, in the last month, that's fine, but it has to be specific. So I usually like to say, like here's the action that I saw you do and I really appreciate it because it was emblematic of this character trait you have, right, or this value that you exemplify, right. So really getting into, like the thing that you really appreciate and I want you to share it with that person and then repeat it again, like four times. So you have five times total that you will be sharing this. Now, if you're facilitating the group, there's some different options here, so you might point out five individual actions. So if you have a group of 20 people, you're not going to share five individual actions for all 20 people. You just don't have the time. You may point out like five individuals from the group. You can highlight five things the group has done. As a group, you also could have participants turn and talk to a partner so that each partner does receive the five appreciations that are specific to them, because that receipt of appreciation is, you know, likened to deposits in a bank, like these are good, we can draw on these later if we have conflict, like we always want to build up the positive, and so if you want to be really strategic in partnering people with maybe colleagues or fellow students that do not typically talk to one another, that could be good. You're building that, will there. So I really like a vocab bank for this. I think students and generally people of all ages benefit from a vocabulary bank, because we're not used to appreciating one another using specific language. We're just not. So I like to use values and actions, character strengths. They have a list of 24. I'll link that in the blog post for today's episode if you want to check it out, if you haven't already. Again, that blog post is at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 176. All right, so we do the appreciations. Everybody shares five appreciations. Ideally, everybody gets five appreciations. Praise what's going well is the next step. So if student-led discussions, for example, are your priority for this year, instructionally, you would share positive feedback from students or your observations of what is going well. So again, this works at a class level. Hey, students, I've noticed that you know we did these five things really well and again, it doesn't have to be five, but here we're just praising, like we. I noticed that in the last conversation you all did really good with equity of voice and you invited students who were quiet to share and just made sure they had an opportunity. Right Again, as a leader going in, you know this person's class. I saw this great discussion on this. Here's what went well. I also got to see this person's class. You get the idea If you have been struggling to improve something, maybe like as a staff and as a whole school community, we're really working on listening deeply. That's something that's really important to us. This year we weren't very good at it. We got some survey data that said we were pretty terrible at it and I've witnessed it get better. Here are some examples. Like, I'm noticing this is going well, it's improving. You could also just do a general point out of like so-and-so is doing amazing things right. This is just what's going well in general. Kaya's class is doing fantastic with asking inquiry questions this year. So if you have time, stop by a launch lesson if that's okay with Kaya, right? So whatever is going well, we wanna have space for it there. So again, we've just done the first half of the meeting, where we just say five things we appreciate and we get some appreciation back and we praise what is going well. So it's all positive, right. And now we get to the second half of the meeting and we have step three as processing a challenging incident or issue. So here's the moment where you, as the facilitator of a group, perhaps could share out what your thoughts are. You could also invite participants to each share an incident that's important to them that they'd like to navigate, talk through. If you are in a partner dynamic, you can alternate sharing, right. So if it's a one-to-one, I share a challenging incident, we talk through you. If you are in a partner dynamic, you can alternate sharing, right. So if it's a one-to-one, I share a challenging incident, we talk through it, and then you have an opportunity to share a challenging incident, right. But the important thing here is that throughout, gottman really encourages non-defensive listening and empathy. In fact, he has a whole acronym, I think it's ATTUNE A-T-T-U-N-E. I'm not going to get into all those, but the most important thing that I think is not kind of a given or the thing that's hardest to do, are those non-defensive listening and empathy which I believe are the N-E of the acronym, a tune. So the goal is really seeking to understand I feel like that's become a theme of a lot of my work lately is seeking to understand is the goal versus being heard, right, of course, as the sharer, you want to be valued, you want to be heard, you want to be like you know, given the space that you see someone is receiving your words and deeply committed to you know receiving them. So, as the shar share I think sentence starters might help but kind of parameters to share with whoever is sharing at the moment is that you want to share the emotion that you're experiencing, or experienced, if it was like a challenging incident that occurred in the past, again the past week, we're not bringing up like old, old stuff, right? Whatever it is that this week, if we're having weekly meetings, is that we want to talk about. Share the emotion, share the specific thing that happened. So not attacking like this is something you failed to do, like you didn't do this, right, but here's the thing that happened. And then your need, right, so the sentence done, for example, I feel about blank, I need whatever it is. So here's an example If a teacher is talking one-on-one to a student about an incident, skip class, for example. Right, the teacher might say to the student I feel worried about when you are not in class. I need you to tell me why you missed my class so I can help you succeed. Right, I feel about, about, I need. So we're processing that challenging incident and we can have an open conversation. It doesn't have to be that the person shares the challenging incident and we just leave it right. We actually do want to process, and we've built up all of that positivity early on in the conversation, that we should be equipped enough, drawing from the bank, all of those deposits we should have enough in there that we can navigate the challenging end of it. And then, step four, we wrap it up with what can I do next week to make you feel more loved? Now, some people may problematize the word love in classroom spaces. I personally have had students. I would tell students that I love them and I have personally had students tell me like no other teacher, no other person today told me that they love me, like this really was important, like I know that you love me, that you care about me. Right, so it could be. What can I do next week to make you feel like you matter, that you belong, cared for? Whatever word you want to use, fine, I'm just going to use Gottman's words, because I do think that love is at the heart of what we do, and I'm not afraid to say that. So identify whatever phrasing works for you and go with it. But what you want to do here, what can I do next week to make you feel more loved, is to invite ideas from everybody. So all participants in a group setting or, if you're again a one-to-one, like you, would ask the question, your partner would respond, and then your partner would ask the question and you would get to respond. So what this does is that each person asking what they individually can do to help one another feel loved. I think it really demonstrates a commitment to their own. Like, each of you have your own responsibilities. Yeah for and clarity on the goal, which is that in this case, all period, all people excuse me should experience love. So that experience of love should be given to everyone. You are committed as an individual to giving that experience of love to everyone and you're open to receiving the ideas from the other person. So you're not just you know I'm thinking about love languages here You're not just like loving and gift form, like I got you all these gifts and someone else's love language is actually, you know, like words of affirmation, like they just needed you to say thank you when you did this thing. Right, like cool. Like we're not communicating in the same way. It's very important that we know how people want to be loved so that we can love them in that way, and I think this is really relevant for staff and classrooms. Like we don't always communicate in the same ways that other people need to receive communication, and we think we're helping and we're putting so much effort in and we're trying so hard for this student or this colleague and they just don't get it Right Totally. I've been there. I have been there, and by inviting the question, by asking the question, inviting the responses, we are now engaging with that dynamic and to say I'm committed to doing this thing for you. You just got to tell me, right, I'm inviting you to tell me and I'm going to listen to your answer and I'm going to act on it, that is powerful stuff what a way it flows out to save the union. So that's the last piece, I think. The final tip I want to share with you, though, is that this should be a routine schedule it into, if you're a teacher, your lesson plans, if you're a leader or coach, your PD calendar, your team meeting agendas, whatever it is. And you know what, if weekly doesn't work, don't say, oh, I'm just not going to do this. I can't do it weekly, Totally fine, it can happen monthly, it can happen every unit, like as often as you can do it, right, but don't completely write it off because you can't do it weekly. Also, just want to name this is probably self-evident but very important to make sure we we leave this conversation with this understanding. You do not have to wait for the state of the union meeting to share appreciations with one another, right? You can embed appreciations into your regular practice. You can write every single day. You can write a student or a colleague an appreciation note. Here's just how I start my day. I arrive at school, I take 30 seconds to rip off a post-it, write someone's you know action or value, whatever that they exemplified, and put it on their desk or in their mailbox in the office or whatever. Send an email. That simple 60 seconds. I start my day this week at one person a day. That's a lot of appreciation you're sending out into the world, right? And imagine a class full of students who are growing up with this being just how we do things. This is how we exist in community with one another. How beautiful. So to help you build and sustain a culture of belonging with your students or your staff, I'm going to share with you in today's blog post my staff meeting agenda series. It's completely free. There's an agenda and a slide deck for 60 minute increments. I think there's four total. You can use these activities for students. It is designed for staff, but it is only designed for staff because I believe in that one learning model for all idea of we do this with staff so that they can do it with students right. So, regardless of your role, that will be relevant. You can grab that at the blog post for today's episode, which is lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 176. Until next time, if you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazzed as I am about my coaching program for increasing student-led discussions in your school Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice. In their book Street Data, they say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm how I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan, from full-day trainings and discussion protocols like Circle and Socratic Seminar to follow-up classroom visits where I can plan, witness and debrief discussion-based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy, no-strings-attached brainstorm. Call at lindsaybethlyonscom slash contact. Until next time leaders, think big, act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network Better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there. Explore more podcasts at teachbettercom slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
August 2024
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