Episode 2 Optimism
Episode 2 OPTIMISM
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Welcome to Episode 2 as we take our first element in the Climate category from the Clarity and Order for Special Education Success platform: We are talking OPTIMISM. Over the past few years in my consulting experience, I have facilitated high school teams going deeper in Transition and in the areas of self-determination and self-advocacy. In some places, it is common to see IEP goals written in these areas, but when I asked teams how do you actually promote and teach these things some of them wanted help with this. In those conversations, sometimes it would sound as though a level of learned helplessness could be seen with students and with parents.
Artificial intelligence tells us that
For individuals with disabilities, learned helplessness can manifest in several ways:
1. Repeated Negative Experiences: If people with disabilities encounter numerous barriers, discrimination, or lack of support, they may start to feel that their efforts to improve their situations are futile. This can lead to a sense of helplessness where they stop trying to overcome challenges or advocate for themselves.
2. Reduced Self-Efficacy: Learned helplessness can erode self-efficacy, or the belief in one’s ability to succeed. For individuals with disabilities, negative experiences and societal attitudes might lead them to believe they are incapable of achieving their goals, which can impact their motivation and engagement in activities.
3. Social and Environmental Factors: Societal attitudes, accessibility issues, and inadequate support systems can contribute to learned helplessness. For instance, if an individual frequently faces inaccessible environments or unaccommodating attitudes, they may start to believe that making changes or seeking help is pointless.
4. Psychological Impact: Learned helplessness can contribute to mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. The feeling of being trapped in a situation without any possibility of change can be especially distressing for individuals with disabilities who face additional challenges.
So this learned helplessness phenomena is real and not only do I witness it with some students, I see it in some parents, some staff and some administrators.
As I started to craft professional learning around self-determination, I could not help but to think back on a book I read many years ago called "Learned Optimism” by Martin Seligman published in 1991.
Seligman along with Steven Maier did research on “learned helplessness”
They said that "Learned helplessness" is a psychological phenomenon where individuals come to believe that they are unable to control or influence the events affecting their lives, often as a result of repeated exposure to uncontrollable and stressful situations. I believe that this can apply to not only students and families but also to staff and administrators. Let me repeat the researchers definition. When individuals come to believe that they are unable to control or influence the events affecting their lives, often as a result of repeated exposure to uncontrollable and stressful situations.
So being aware of this condition for all of these stakeholder groups gives us the opportunity to impact it and change it.
Seligman began the conversation of Optimism versus Pessimisim. He defines Optimism as quote “Optimists tend to see challenges as temporary and specific to particular situations. They believe that they can control or influence outcomes and view setbacks as a temporary inconvenience.” Unquote. He defines pessimism as quote “Pessimists, on the other hand, see challenges as permanent and pervasive. They often believe that failures are due to their own lack of ability and that these failures will affect all areas of their lives.”
This may be a sensitive topic for some people with varying abilities, particularly for the more significantly impacted. However, even some of the most physically and cognitively impacted people I have ever known were also some of the biggest optimists! I give you a young woman, Cassidy, who is now in her upper 20s. Although non-verbal and very impacted physically with cerebral palsy, she was voted as the Senior of the Year in her high school. This was not a special education award but the most prestigious award for any student in her class. It took her over three weeks to write her acceptance speech as it was a very laborious and exhausting task to write on a computer using levers on her communication device to compose. However, the biggest line of her speech was “I may have CP but CP does not have me!” The crowd at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in the foothills west of Denver roared in appreciation! Cassidy did not view her situation as hopeless and I am sure you can think of other examples of students with strong optimism in your world.
Dr. Seligman also went on to examine the “explanatory style” and how it drives either Optimism or Pessimism. This refers to how people explain the causes of events, especially failures. He breaks explanatory style into three definitions:
Internal vs. External:** Internal explanations attribute failures to personal shortcomings, while external explanations attribute them to outside factors.
Stable vs. Unstable:** Stable explanations suggest that failures are due to enduring factors, while unstable explanations view failures as due to temporary circumstances.
Global vs. Specific:** Global explanations suggest that failures affect all areas of life, while specific explanations see failures as limited to a particular situation.
So the pessimist would attribute failures to personal shortcomings, due to enduring or ongoing factors and suggest that these failures affect all areas of life.
But the optimist would attribute failures to outside factors, and due to temporary circumstances and see failures as limited to a particular situation.
So two dramatically different views. Now granted, for some students there may be several things that have compounded their attitude. And granted for some special education teachers there can be several things that hit them all at once to challenge their optimism. For example the year just started, let’s say the following things are emerging:
New caseload, significantly higher than last year
New students with more challenging behaviors than last year
New parents being more impatient and demanding than last year
Staff shortages and missing a badly need para educator
8 IEPs due in October
A new IEP system
A new mandated data collection system
A new mandated progress monitoring tool
A new legal complaint being filed
Turnover with SPED administrators
Throw in an expensive and unexpected car repair and a troubled child at home.
This teacher may be leaning on the pessimistic side and we could understand why.
We could paint a similar challenging scenario to any of our stakeholder groups. The question is how and what can we do to ensure Optimism among our school community? When we return, we will consider remedies to learned helplessness and pessimism in our special education community! STOP (INTERMISSION)
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OK so to refresh from the last segment, this Seligman research implies that how we explain our setbacks or failures has a lot to do with our level of optimism or pessimism in moving forward.
This applies to all of us including our students with varying abilities. If we can model a healthy explanatory style to them we can help them become more optimistic and be more successful as a learner.
This is a vicious cycle for some students that have had a tough series of setbacks and may live with family that are on the more pessimistic side. Bottomline, for students in this research is that the more pessimistic they are the more they will be impacted by Learned Helplessness. So it’s no wonder the name of my favorite book is Learned Optimism!
In March of 2024, I hosted a two day event for parents of children with IDD along with several community agencies. I encouraged these parents to think about their explanatory style meaning how they explained setbacks to themselves. And more importantly, I encouraged them to self-reflect in how they explained setbacks to their children with IDD. The more positively and specifically we explain setbacks the more open we will be to success in the future.
How do you as a District or school leader explain setbacks to your stakeholders?
How do you as a teacher or provider explain setbacks to your students?
In the last segment we looked at what AI said about Learned Helplessness and people with disabilities. Now let’s look at what AI says about
Strategies to Address Learned Helplessness:
1. Empowerment and Self-Advocacy: Encouraging self-advocacy and providing tools and resources to help individuals with disabilities advocate for their needs can counteract feelings of helplessness. Support groups and advocacy organizations can play a crucial role in this.
2. Positive Reinforcement: Providing positive reinforcement and celebrating small successes can help rebuild self-efficacy. This involves recognizing and rewarding efforts and achievements, no matter how minor they may seem.
3. Skill Development: Offering training and opportunities for skill development can help individuals with disabilities gain confidence in their abilities and reduce feelings of helplessness. This might include vocational training, social skills development, or adaptive technology training.
4. Improving Accessibility: Working towards more inclusive and accessible environments can help reduce the external barriers that contribute to learned helplessness. This involves both physical accessibility and creating supportive social and institutional structures.
5. Therapeutic Interventions: Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and other therapeutic approaches can help individuals challenge and change maladaptive beliefs associated with learned helplessness. Therapy can also provide strategies for coping with and overcoming challenges.
Overall, addressing learned helplessness in people with disabilities involves a combination of individual support, systemic change, and societal attitude shifts to create a more inclusive and empowering environment.
Let’s take a look at addressing this with various subgroups:
First for students, we need to get focused on best practices for self-determination and self-advocacy. There are many models available to use and great resources on NTACT-C the Collaborative. There is also the work from Hoffman and Field which is popular in some places. They advocate for focusing on the following four activities, which are critical to this element of self-determination:
The areas for guiding students are:
Compare actual outcome to expected outcome
Compare performance to expected performance
Realize success
Make adjustments
There are many opportunities to discuss these elements with students in a school!
For example, did the student get the job? Or make the team? What did they expect to happen and what really happened? What type of explanatory style are they using to describe the outcome especially if it is a disappointing outcome?
Hoffman and Field also have another model Model of Self-Determination that provides a nice framework for reviewing key elements for providing instruction on self-determination to youth with disabilities. It includes six major elements:
1. Know Yourself and Your Environment
2. Value Yourself
3. Plan
4. Act
5. Experience Outcomes and Learn
6. Environment
I have also found the 12 simple tips from Brookespublishing.com as helpful strategies that are easy for teachers to implement.
One of the logical outcomes from building self determination and self advocacy is that the student becomes more involved in their IEP and can actually lead parts of the IEP meeting or the whole meeting eventually. Some districts have an expectation for the student led IEPs and other districts where it rarely occurs. Best practice says they should be leading it and driving it with their vision for a successful future.
We could spend a lot more time on this topic of self-determination for students and we do when we offer professional learning sessions. One thing most of the models agree on is that if you are going to be successful in building self determination you rerally need to inmvolve the parent guardians. It needs to be a joint effort so that the emphasis is mutual ay school and at home. Calibrating expectation for this is crucial with parents and guardians.
So optimism can be supported for students through a strong self-determination teaching model.
Next, for Special Education teachers, how do you explain setbacks to yourself? How do you explain setbacks to your students? What is your explanatory style with parents? How about with administrators? How self aware are you with your communication style? I think it is safe to say that teachers and providers are often the most optimistic people in the special education realm. You are the ones that are always the voice of encouragement, the one who promotes an optimistic outlook for students and parents.
I can look back and tell you stories about the heroes of the teaching ranks, who no matter what would give parents an optimistic report about the toughest student on his or her toughest day. This would build such confidence with parents knowing that even though it was a difficult day behaviorally or academically that the teacher has confidence in it getting better! I can also look back unfortunately and remember some teachers that communicated a more pessimistic view of the tough day with a more global explanatory style like “everything went wrong today”. This would not build confidence with parents and usually a change of placement would then be more likely the conversation. And in this scenario I remember observing the same student with the same behaviors in an out of district placement and he or she would have the same struggles but the out of district staff would have the more optimistic review of the student and present a more “can do” attitude sustaining confidence with the parents. How teachers give feedback to parents is a crucial area in building optimism in your school community.
For those that may not have this as a strength, what a great thing to work on.
For Special Education administrators, I know there were times in my career that it was really easy to be optimistic and hopeful and thankfully most of my years were spent in that mode. However, there were times when the floodgates opened and I was managing:
Multiple legal cases simultaneously
Dealing with angry parents, angry teachers, angry superiors
Dealing with budget cuts and staffing cuts
Having staff shortages
Trying to implement a new IEP system
Sometimes that perfect storm did exist, and it was then that I really needed to focus on relationships with everyone and be that positive and reassuring voice for everybody. So for our SPED administrators, how do you reflect on your explanatory style? Are you specific in your explanation or can you lean towards a more global explanation when you have so many challenging setbacks that can happen. Litigation unfortunately gobbles up the time and attention from many of our SPED administrators and when your spending more time with attorneys than you are with educators it can challenge your optimism.
Having a trusted and valued inner circle of friends and colleugues will go along way in helping you sustain your optimism. Having balance between work and home is a huge consideration. I have worked in districts where there was not really an expectation of having a healthy balance between work and home. In districts like this, email communication is not uncommon to flow in the evenings and on weekends. However, I have also worked in districts that placed a high value on a healthy balance between work and home. In this district it was frowned upon to send an email in the evening or on the weekend unless it was a dire emergency. So the answer to sustain optimism in your school community starts with a healthy balance between work and home. How does your current district value the healthy balance between work and home and what are you promoting?
Administrators who display optimism can positively influence staff morale. Their positive attitude can be contagious, helping to build a supportive and collaborative work environment. This applies to all of our different types of leaders in the special education realm.
Research suggests that when special education administrators are optimistic, they are more likely to believe in the potential of all students to succeed, regardless of their disabilities. This belief can drive the implementation of inclusive practices and high expectations, which are key factors in improving student outcomes.
How about for school administrators? What is typically your explanatory style with your staff? With your parents or guardians? Optimistic leaders contribute to a positive school climate, which can improve student outcomes, staff retention, and overall school performance. A positive school climate is especially critical in special education settings, where students and staff as you know often face unique and complex challenges.
Optimistic administrators are more likely to use adaptive coping strategies when faced with stress, reducing the likelihood of burnout. This is crucial in special education, where the demands again, as you know, can be particularly high.
In summary, optimism in special education leaders is associated with a range of positive outcomes, including better leadership, improved staff morale, enhanced resilience, and potentially better student outcomes.
This explanatory style that Seligman was researching can be influenced and changed to be more optimistic. The book provides techniques for challenging and reframing pessimistic thoughts, such as questioning the validity of negative beliefs and replacing them with more balanced and realistic thoughts.
Seligman also offers practical exercises and strategies to build optimism. These include:
- **Gratitude Journals:** Keeping a record of positive events and things for which one is grateful.
- **Cognitive Restructuring:** Identifying and challenging negative thought patterns.
- **Positive Visualization:** Imagining positive outcomes and focusing on successes.
This is just the first element in this Climate category. We are looking for every advantage we can get, to help influence an overwhelmingly positive climate for all of our stakeholders. The climate in any school district is evident to all. I have seen great examples of wonderful climates and also unfortunate examples of woeful climates. In multiple districts I have had the pleasure of transforming climates from woeful to wonderful. In one district, when I first got there the community narrative was “Special Education sucks here”. I heard it from parents, from staff, from community members. It was because of high turnover with leadership. With some attention to detail and a new dedicated effort to build strong interagency collaboration we changed that narrative to “special education is better now”.
Thanks for joining in today to consider the role of Optimism in the special education community. We invite everyone to tune in and self-reflect. If you are interested in a professional learning session. We host cohorts for Special Education Administrators, Special Education Teachers and Providers as well as Cohorts for School Administrators. You can access more information about these opportunities on my website at www.bobbarrows.com. You can book a free consultation with me from the Contact page to discuss the possibility of joining a Cohort on the East coast at Saint Simon’s Island GA, or the West coast on the Monterey Peninsula. We also offer trainings in the Rocky Mountain region at Colorado Springs. In addition, Dr. Adrielle Benini is available for Autism specific Cohorts in these locations. If you are interested in having us come to your district to help your Special Education teams analyze their strengths and areas of professional growth, we are available now to facilitate self-reflection for your district’s teams.
Episode 3 is next where we analyze the Harmony between Special Education and General Education as well as the harmony in other equations of our Special Education realm. We will draw meaningful connections to how we think about our special education reality and look for areas in which to grow. Thanks for joining us today and stay tuned for more collaboration very soon! You are already an amazing asset to your students with varying abilities and we just want to help you get even more amazing and help you fill the gaps where you and your your teams have room to grow with best practices! Have a great day everyone!
