Supporting Student Mental Health & SEL with Iuri Melo of School Pulse

 Welcome back everybody. First of all, I wanna thank you and applaud you. You are listening in. It already tells me a lot. It means that you care about students and you care about having more positive teaching experience. And I know there are so many podcasts out, there are so many distractions, so much noise.

But the fact that you're tuning in, like I said, tells me a lot, and I thank you for that and I applaud you for that. So this week is something different. You may know if you're a regular listener that I don't often have guests. I do have lots of people reach out to me, but I don't like to waste anyone's time.

So unless it's something I think is really actionable and that teachers can use immediately and that will really benefit them or their students, or ideally both. I tend not to have guests, but this gentleman today is an exception to that role. His name is Yuri Mellow and he co-founded a company called School Pulse, and this conversation is important.

I have to tell you, it is a longer podcast than usual and I do pride myself on. Hosting unedited content. So it is our actual conversation now, with that, it is a little bit long and I have to say, I'm gonna give a trigger warning in a minute, but this topic is near and dear to my heart, and I was a little emotional and.

I, I've never listened to myself, so say so many ums and ahs and writes Oh my word. It is, it was literally painful for me to listen back to, but I feel the content is important, so I am gonna let it run. As is. His company that he co-founded is proactive on giving students positive psychology tools in the form of texts and.

Also, the biggest part is access to counselors, therapists, practitioners, confidentially, anonymously, before and after school, with the goal of helping students with anything that they struggle with from absenteeism, bad grades, all the things, all the way through. Prevention. So I do wanna say it actually was a very optimistic episode.

There was a story he tells at around minute 45, 46, 47. Wow. It, it will blow you away. It's really what it's sticking around for. But all is to say it is a heavier episode. I'm gonna give a trigger warning. There is brief talk of suicidal and homicidal ideation with kids and other things that kids struggle with.

So if that is a topic very close to you right now, even though you might need an extra resource I don't want you to find this upsetting. There's no, you know. Nobody's going into any gory details, but it is the topic of discussion. So I will introduce you to Yuri Meow with School Pulse. I will put all of his all the links in the show notes as to how to get on board with his program and all of his free resources.

And that's it. Thanks for listening. Again, it is a little longer, excuse all the ums and ahs, but you know, it's, it's kind of raw and authentic and we will get right to it after the intro. Welcome to the Teacher Self-Care and Life Balance podcast, where we focus all things. Personal development to help teachers feel empowered to thrive inside and outside of the classroom.

If you are passionate about education, but tired of it taking over your whole life, you have found your new home in the podcast universe, you'll love it here. I'm Grace Stevens, your host, and let's get going with today's show. Well, here we are. Welcome. Thank you so much for being here. Yuri Mellow from School Pulse.

We are thrilled to have you. And so to start off, I would love for you to tell us just a little bit about yourself and your journey and how you came to Co-Found School Puffs. 

Wow. First of all, grace, just thank you so much for letting me come and just hang out with you and, i'm excited to see where this goes.

I feel like every one of these interviews goes, goes, its its own organic way, and so I'm interested to see where we arrive today. But yeah, my name is Yuri Mellow. I'll, I'll just kind of give you a brief introduction if that's okay. I'm I mean, I'm a married man. I am I've got five fabulous kids. I'm a grandpa.

I actually just turned 50 this last Sunday, so Oh, congratulations. It's amazing. Thank you so much, grace. You're lovely for saying that. But I've, I've been I actually grew up in, in Portugal, I was born in Africa, then moved to Portugal and then moved to America when I was a teenager. And I've been here ever since.

I started out really as an a licensed clinical social worker. So really as a private clinician about 20 years ago, and have just been incredibly fortunate to really, to be a practitioner. In fact, just, I mean, I literally just LA left the session. And there's just nothing better. I'll be honest with you.

I absolutely adore that part of my practice where I just get to meet. People. And very quickly I get to dive into the nitty gritties of their life and just talk about their dreams, their passion, some of their failures, some of their sadness. And I just love that. And then about I, I wrote a couple of books.

I would say probably about 10 or 11 years into my practice, I wrote Mind Over Gray Matter. For adults and then no thy selfie for teens. And that one was a bestseller, which was great. And I just loved that process. If I could just say that, that was, it was so challenging and yet writing something, getting all that stuff that was just up there and somehow.

Purging it onto paper. And that whole process of writing, editing, writing, editing, editing, writing, just this continuous, was just so good. It was just so healthy for my mind. And then about seven years ago. Was when I started school Pulse. And, and we can definitely talk more about that. In fact, I can jump right into it.

We had, so I live in this fabulous community. Grace, I don't know if you've ever been to Utah. I don't even know. Where are you at Grace? 

Oh, so I don't get full by the accent. No, I'm in Northern California. My listeners know that I've fool. 

I fool for sure. Yeah. No, I've been 

here 38 years. If I haven't lost the accent yet.

It's not happening. Tell me where, whereabouts in, in north, maybe you don't wanna stay, but whereabout. Oh, no, no. I live in Los Gato. 

I live part-time in Moscato. I was part-time in San Francisco, so South Bay, north Bay. But all my teaching experience was in the actually the Central Valley migrant worker children.

And lots, so many parallels. Like I've written books. Yeah. It is a process. Yes, my daughter is, social worker. She works in childhood mental health. Very, oh, bless you. All. Very challenging. Yes. And so I hear all about it all the time, but yeah. Tell us about school polle. 'cause that's so so yeah, this is where we're at.

We wanna know. It sounds like a fantastic resource that, that teachers and schools really, really need. 

Grace. It honestly is, in fact, I just had a meeting this morning with a couple of counselors from a couple of like different school districts. Mm-hmm. And it truly is like when we present our suite of services, right.

Our, our, what I would like to say is when we present to schools our solutions that are. That really have been created as a result of their needs or their challenges. Mm-hmm. Like counselors just literally, they're just like, oh my gosh, like where has this been? How do I get it? But, but as you probably know, and maybe you don't, I assume you do it, it's, it's very challenging for schools to adopt new things, right?

Yeah. Because ho honestly, I feel like counselors, administrators, teachers are, I think naturally overwhelmed. There's a lot to do. They're often under-resourced, sometimes they're obviously they're underpaid many times. And so to adopt or or to bring something new in always feels like, oh my gosh, this is gonna be one more thing.

And what we're absolutely. Obsessed about at School Pulse is how can we provide something that will create high impact for students that is very low lift for educators, or for counselors, or for administrators. And I think we have done that. And so I'm, I'm excited to get into some of that detail, but before I do, I'll, I'll give you a little bit of our genesis story if you kind of wanna know that, because it's, it's tragic and beautiful at the same time.

But I, I. So I live in this lovely part of the world kind of in the, the southwest corner of Utah. We're literally kind of surrounded by these beautiful, just national parks, Bryce Canyon, Zion, the Grand Canyon, lake Powell, and just these wonderful high desert places. We're about an hour and 45 minutes away from Las Vegas.

And it's just this lovely community of people who are just kind and giving and loving. And about seven years ago we actually had seven middle school and high school students that that took their life by suicide in our community. And I had a, a good friend of mine, in fact, my two oldest daughters were going to, were going to this particular school that had lost two kids to suicide.

And this principal who was there, just a fabulous human being, innovative. Gutsy as a principal. And he reached out to me. By then, I had written some of my books. I had done a little bit of work at his school and he reached out to me because number one, he was experiencing a tremendous amount of pressure, if you can imagine, from parents, from the district.

And he just wanted to do something that was more proactive, something that was a little more innovative. He's, I remember him telling me that he felt like. All that he had at his disposal were just reactive strategies. Right? Yeah. It's almost as if we were passively waiting for crisis to happen and then kind of everybody's scrambling to do what they could.

We know 

that kids, I mean, there is nothing worse. I've certainly been in schools, of course, yeah. Where this has happened and it's awful and it's so, and I mean, it is terrible for parents, it's terrible for students. But you know, as teachers that guilt like, what did I miss? What could I have done? And, and maybe we did the things which we're trying to get 'em to the school counselor, but the school counselor is so impacted, like their workload is so, you know, it's just a horrible situation to feel that.

We missed the boat, but there were only so many things we could do. There were only so many resources at our hands, you know? And so that's really, to have something else, like you said, that is a low lift when we're already so overwhelmed is such a fantastic thing. So tell everybody really what some of the, you know, like.

Yeah, 

I know it's a suite of things, but like Yes. Just give us like an overview of, of what it entails. I love 

it. I love it. Yes. Some of our targeted solutions that we bring to schools and we do it exactly for that reason, grace. Mm-hmm. We want to walk into a school. And immediately multiply that school's ability Yes.

To reach out, connect and support students. Right. And that's what we do. Right. And so one of the things that we do is, is we have the. What we started with that was truly innovative, and it still is because nobody else is offering. What we offer is we provide live text-based support to students. So students opt into our service or the school opts them into our service, and then we proactively engage those students twice a week.

Every Tuesday, every Friday, every Tuesday we deliver to them. These. I'm telling you, we have a like Nobel Prize winning text-based campaign. It's, it's incredible. But we deliver our student success activities every Tuesday. Write over text. The students don't have to download. There's no usernames. It's not an app.

It just comes directly to their texts. And then on Friday we deliver other content that's meant to be inspirational. We have a couple of questionnaires that allow us to engage with students. Sometimes when I describe kind of the philosophical or the psychological base of our service is I usually tell people that we're a positive psychology service.

That's based obviously on positive psychology, growth mindset, and cognitive behavioral strategies. We use those three because those are the golden standard of clinical practice. Like they are heavily researched, they're evidence-based, and we know that they provide good outcomes, not just in regards to student wellness and obviously suicide prevention, but in academic performance, improvement in behavior improvement in in student participation and engagement.

And the reason why those matter so much is because those. Those specific factors, including, of course, connecting in positive relationships are the best protective factors for kids. And so when we're really talking about suicide prevention, it's less about grace, and I think this is where we've gone wrong a little bit.

It's less about identifying risk or just focusing on the risk factors, and it's instead about being more proactive. With the things that protect and can insulate our children 

a hundred percent. And I 

think, yeah, and I, and I think we've almost, and, and this is probably not part of our discussion, but I'll just, based on what you said, I almost feel like we've gone too far the other way with our educators, even our administrators, we're trying to give them the kinds of tools to identify these things.

And I almost feel like. That's not why we hire teachers. Like we're not hiring administrators to that. No, we're do that. We're around 

playing the therapist without a license. Yeah. I'll be the first to say, I complain about it all the time. I mean, you dump your SEL new curriculum that you bought on me and I'm not tr Well, I actually am a life coach and I have some skills, but yeah, your average teacher is not.

Skilled to and trained to do these types of exercises with students. And it isn't even so much like, oh my gosh, yes, it's one more thing that we need to do, but it's like when we uncover issues, we dunno how to facilitate that discussion. And then now what do we do with it? We've got nothing to do with it.

The, the, the counselor is overwhelmed and it is a pet peeve of mine. There is one more thing that's been put on a teacher's back that is just, you know, we are already. I mean, you know, all my listeners know all the things we do as teachers, but it, yeah, and, and a hundred percent, yes, we are mandated reporters and I believe in that of course.

And we do get some, you know, basic training in that every year. But at the same time, it is too much to ask us to be therapists to, to really know you know, how to support a kid's. Emotional needs when half the teachers I talked to were burnt out. We can't even take care of our own emotional mental health.

How are we supposed to do it for how many hundreds of students a day? So no, you're preaching to the choir. I, when you say, oh, I see. You were very tentative to say, I think we've gone a little too far in the other direction. Yes, you have teach math. Crying out loud. 

Yeah. 

You know, let me teach the parts of the sentence.

That's what I was trained to do. So yes. No, we need it. So you send out text messages. Yeah. What else? So, so yeah, that's one we proactively, 

yeah, that's one part we proactively send and then not just that we send. Right. And this is how we multiply or enhance. Right. Is we have live support. And I'm not talking, we're not talking ai.

We're talking live people who were available before and after school seven days a week through the summer, through the holidays, and that's how we try right to. That that disparity, right, that you described Grace, right? Of you know, one counselor for every three or 400 students, right? Like we just can't do it and it's okay to admit it.

We now just have to work the problem, right? How are we actually gonna come up with some solutions that allow us to reach out and provide that support? And we do that through text. We also immediately do it through an email campaign. The first thing we do when we walk into a school is we immediately enroll all of the parents, all of the students.

And we deliver one email per week. We, we realize that there's so much email communication going on, so we try to not be spammy. We deliver tools to parents and to teens, and once again, our goal is let us do it right. We, we do have those skills. We do have that, that ability to do that. And so we do it over email, we do it over text, and then we provide some fabulous tools that don't require training for teachers, right?

We don't expect you to become proficient. Depression or anxiety or panic attack or other psychological, so we provide what we call our student success activities and even some restorative practice for administrators and counselors that don't require any training, and I realize. The math teacher or the English teacher, or a counselor or a paraprofessional, whether they're dealing in lunch detention or whatever, they may have to provide some of this, you know, whether it's SEL or student wellness or student success type content.

But we created ours in a way that grace, you can open up our activity, you can play it. You don't need to have all of this knowledge because we've provided everything and it's done. You click it, you play it. If you do want to engage with those students, because maybe you are a life coach and you're passionate about this, we have some quiz questions.

We have all of that done. It's all, you don't have to print anything. It's not PDFs. We try to do it so that it, it's not adding to, it's not one more thing that they need to do, but it's one more thing that's done and it's not gonna require you to become this mental health professional at all. And so we try to take that out of your hands, maximum impact low.

That's like our obsession is how do we make that happen? And I think we've done a fabulous job at that. So. 

Alright, so here, here's the piece I'm fascinated with 

love. Love 

is that they, you have, you said you have counselors, therapists. Are they all therapists? Are they available? 

No. We, we, we have a team.

We have licensed professionals and trained paraprofessionals. And we even have some fabulous partnerships with some universities, but go on. 

Okay. So you have people available before school, after school, a trusted adult that a teen not even. Look at that. How times have changed. I would've always said a teen in the past.

Yeah. 

Not, I don't, I'm gonna cry. Not even. Right? Yeah. That a student of any age who is struggling. Con call. So tell me about, 'cause here's the part that I'm like, love. How does that work? 

Yeah. 

Confidentiality, parent permissions, mandated reporting. All the things. How on earth, how, how do you do it? Because I know let's, I could refer, let's get, get down to the nitty degree.

A kid, one time to a counselor without their parents' permission. But after that I couldn't, like they, the counselor needed to get the parents' permission. So how do you deal all with that piece? Because I'm sure there is obviously a confidentiality component, but at the same time. If a child is at risk to themselves or somebody else, there is something you need to do with that.

You are in Utah, right? Absolutely. Do something with that information. So talk me through that, please. And really everywhere 

else. Yeah, and, and, and, and I would say this, I'll start here. Uhhuh, we deal with those issues state by state. Okay? So for example. Utah and Idaho, and I think Texas as well, maybe a couple of others.

Florida is another one I believe. For any child to participate in our text, live text-based engagement, they have to have parental permission to do that. So we us, we actually, we create these. Fabulous posters that have just a QR code and literally kids just walk up to them, scan it, they don't have to download anything, and they literally, a text just pops up and they're, and from that moment on, right, we are providing live support to that student.

It's just brilliant. But those specific states require parental permission. That means for a parent to say, yes, my child can participate in that, and we love that. I we're okay with that. We don't have a problem with that. We recognize that parents wanna be involved. We recognize that they can have concerns.

In fact, one of the things that we do, grace, that one of the first things that we do when we walk into school is we invite schools to send an email that we have created for them. That goes out to every single parent that describes what this initiative in. And invites them to opt in themselves. So when I say that over the past seven years, grace, we have been involved in unbelievable stories like of children who have been suicidal, self-harming, who have reported physical and sexual abuse, who have been homicidal who are struggling with substance abuse, everything that you can imagine, school shootings, gang violence, everything, but not just kids.

We've had parents who are on our support, who are receiving support from us, who themselves are in the middle of divorce or custody battles, or who themselves are going in and out of mental health hospitals who are dealing with their own sadness, depression, suicidal ideation. And we have provided support to those individuals as well.

And so we give parents the ability to opt their children in for those who want them to participate, but we invite them to be part of that system themselves so that they can receive our same campaign right to their phone. So that's one of the things that we do right to gain the trust of parents is everything we do, everything we set is that 100% transparent.

We invite them to involve. And I'm telling you it, it is absolutely fabulous. But specifically when you're talking, I'll, I'll talk about the confidentiality and the anonymity because that's very important. We have to realize that we are dealing with minors and there are some very specific regulations.

Federally speaking, we are not allowed to have. That, those children's personal information. Right. And so when students opt into our service, right, they are truly anonymous to us. We don't know who they are. Like we know the school because each QR code is connected to a specific school or district. So we know that, oh, you know, this child is coming from, you know, this specific high school in San Francisco or in Sacramento or, or in Utah or in Idaho or Montana or Wyoming.

But we don't know who that student is, right? When that student right reports to us, right, there's been physical abuse, there's been sexual abuse, there's suicidal, they're ideating. Then we can engage with that student. And we actively engage in retrieving that information from that student. You know, we don't use any trickery.

We just very up open and upfront like, Hey, we, we wanna provide, we want, we can, would you be willing to give us this information? We can even get that information so that we can provide it to parents. Step one, two, to the professionals at the school administrator. School counselor usually, or school social worker.

Right. Or of course, to refer them to other. Other sources of referral, hopefully local, but sometimes like the 9, 8, 8 service. So our goal we're, we don't pretend to be the final solution here, like the idea is. More often than not, we are this upstream, proactive service that's meant to strengthen the protective factors of children, right?

When we deal with crisis, we do everything we can, of course, to provide them with fabulous resources, right over text, but we do everything in our power to connect them to their parents, to the professionals at the school, and then of course to other forms of resource. And then the best part too, grace, is we continue on, like we continue.

Well downstream as well to continue providing that support. Grace, it sounds crazy, but just listen to this. We have students that have been receiving our positive content for years, less than 3% opt out. We're talking about adolescents here that we're texting twice a week and they, we have students that have gone on to university to college.

Who asked to stay on our server, of course we sh we shifted them out of that kind of high school account into another account. But it's fabulous. Like our content is benign, it's inspirational, it's evidence-based. It's not controversial, it's not political. It's we, there is a very fine line and you would know this grace, there is a fine line that has to be walked.

I believe we have done that. We, we do that cautiously. We do it with parents in mind. We do it with children in mind, and I think we've been able to do that to the point where even some states where this could be challenging, like we have a wonderful contract with the state of Idaho. They have vetted all of our content.

And they feel confident that they could send everything that we have to parents and and to do so in a way that would not create problems or controversy because that's the last thing that we would wanna create in a school, is more problems for that school. And I think we've done a wonderful job of doing that.

I hope I answered your question. I know, yeah. You've kind of had multiple parts to Yeah. I just know 

for me, because if I think of kids who I've known who are in crisis, and a part of the conversation is, you know, I'm a trusted adult, and they'll come to me and I'm like, okay, well these are the resources, but it's like, you know, the first thing they say is Don't tell my parents.

Of course. Of course, 

unfortunately. Yeah, a lot of the times, 

yeah, 

the issues are, you know, parents are struggling. Yes. Sometimes. Yeah. And you know, then I feel like a social worker, which I'm not as my daughter often reminds me, you are not a licensed social worker. This is not your responsibility, but yes, my kid and they're in my care and their parents like the skills through no fault of their own either, right?

Yeah. And you know, I want resources for them. Okay, so that answers that question. So what about, let me ask you this then. Love it. So, parents might be struggling. They appreciate this. Students main focus, the whole reason we're here is struggling. They appreciate this. What about teachers? Can I get your staff?

Can you, can teachers call you? Of course. Or do you have a separate program for that? Of course, because we need it to, 

we, we, we, we don't, I, I'm in the process of maybe creating what I would call some professional and personal development, right? Mm-hmm. In association with some teachers, because to be honest, I have not been an educator.

My educ. My involvement in education started seven years ago, but it's indirect. And so I don't wanna claim like that. I have all the solutions because I, I have not walked that path that you have, but I have some wonderful administrators and teachers that have walked that path. So we're in the process of actually creating that.

But that being said, we offer our text-based support, and usually when we send out our weekly email. Usually schools will include staff in that list. Okay? And so they receive our awesome videos. And even though I have to say our niche is seven through 12, six through 12, that's kind of all of our content is secondary based.

And so. I mean, I write, I create all the content. I'm kind of the psychology behind the project, and so all of this is created for them. But I guarantee and grace, I'll share all of these links with you and you can certainly share them with your teachers and, but you'll find that that content, I hope you will, at least that is just as powerful, just as meaningful for you because the skills I'm teaching them are really skills for us as well.

I just happen to teach them in a kind of language that will be. That's relevant and not cringey for them. But that's fun, that's inspiring. And that gives them the option like, Hey, this is, it's your call. Like you are ultimately the boss of your life. Hopefully I can make a presentation to you that feels logical, it feels reasonable, it feels intelligent, and then you can choose to do it or not do it for yourself.

But, so I know that over time, not just parents, not just students, but we've had lots. Of counselors, lots of educators who have been part of our platform as well, whom we have just been absolutely honored to provide support to individually as well. So that's great. And our team is totally trained. Like we've, we've actually worked in some other areas too, with army veterans and things, so we've done a lot of work with some really vulnerable and traumatized individuals as well, so.

So 

for what it's worth. Let me tell you this. Love is that I have spent, so I dunno if you know my history, my, my readers, my listeners do. But I was in the corporate world for 13 years, burnt out all the things. My dream job went back to school in my late thirties to become a teacher. Oh, I everything I wanted it to be.

Life was magical. And then within two years. I had created the same circumstances for myself, overwhelmed, complete lack of boundaries, totally burned out, like just I didn't have another career change in me. And so I decided I needed to learn some skills like the the common denominator in all of this.

Even though yes, it was a toxic corporate environment, it paid like 10 times more than I was making as a teacher. So I felt if I would be this stressed, I would've gone back to that. But I really passionately believe in, you know, a free and equitable education for all children. So I was like, I'm not gonna quit teaching, but I need some skills.

I need to learn how to say no guilt free, how to set some boundaries, how to, you know, do all the things, take care of my own mental health, you know, fill my own bucket before I can just like, you know, sure. Kind of Marty myself to everybody else. And so that. I spent 20 years researching, getting qualifications, doing things for myself.

And then when other teachers noticed, oh, we have the same kids, the same this, the same that. And you seem to not be as stressed about it, tell us about that. That's when I love it. Wrote a couple of books and did some other things. And so lo and behold a couple of years ago, but life changes, other things happening and I decided I was going to move and I really wasn't interested in starting again at a new school district.

I'd already been at two. And coming up for retirement age, quite frankly, and I said, okay, I'll step out and I will do this full time. For teachers, there is such a need and there is such a need, but here's the problem I've found. One, teachers won't invest in their own personal development. They will put everything in their classroom.

They will do everything for their kids, but to invest time, energy, a little money in themselves doesn't feel great. Okay, great. I'll sell it to schools. It takes a really enlightened administrator to hire somebody to teach their staff how to set appropriate boundaries, because schools benefit from the fact that teachers don't set boundaries.

That teachers keep giving and giving and giving, and that is at the root of a lockdown. Interesting. Right? And so I just wanna tell you that good luck if you managed to crack that code. I'll be really, I I'll join your team because it has been a hard struggle. Yes. Teachers need other skills too. And you know, many things that we were never taught in school, especially if we're an older teacher.

But I do find that that is at the root of a lot of the issues is that teachers feel that they are very like it's a vocation. It was a calling we get super easily. Yeah, yeah, 

yeah. 

Guilted into things. Oh, if you don't do it, who will? The kids will go without. We are very well, honestly, I'll just say we're people pleasers with very conflict avoidant for the most part.

And everybody be happy. Right. Everybody use your kind words, right? So like, it's kind of, teaching tends to attract people who have a hard time. Right. And then I do find that the worst part of the job is this vicarious trauma that we carry around, that students come to us with so many issues and it is hard to turn it off at the end of the day for us.

That. And, you know, even if we set all some boundaries as far as I'm not gonna bring work home. I'm gonna take my phone, email off my phone my school email off my phone, I'm gonna, you know, put, you know, office hours. Right. Even if we go home without dragging the home. The work with us, what we bring home is that emotional peace with us.

We lose sleep worrying about our kids, we stress about it. Like it, it really is. And, and we just kind of absorb their trauma 'cause that's the type of people we are. Right. And so I find it's really it is awesome to have. Something else to think we're not in this alone, that this sounds like a great resource.

But yeah, I think it's it is a hard issue for teachers and it is a hard issue to give teachers some skills to combat their own burnout. Because, yeah. There is nothing worse when a kid hurts themselves or hurts somebody else. And even if there are, you know, a million different things at play, right?

There's, you know, social media pressure, multitude factors. But when I started, so how many, oh, it was the video games was doing it, you know, it's, there's always, you know, now it's COVID. Now it's, parents are so dysregulated, right? But the common denominator is my teacher at heart tells me they still spend six and a half hours a day with me.

I should have seen something like we put it on ourselves, right? It's like they spend more time with me during the school year than they do with their parents. And so it is very it's one of the most difficult things. And it is something nobody really talks about, people don't wanna talk about, they wanna see on Pinterest, we put our lesson plans right in our beautiful classrooms and nobody's posting on Pinterest like.

Our school lost a student today. Like what could we have done differently? So all that to say, that whole big dialogue to say, oh my God, thank you so much for trying to do something. Because it is so hard to feel like we're in it on our own a lot of the time. So we wanna do something and, and everybody else on campus is well intentioned, but we only have so many resources and the pressure is always, if we have money to spend it on.

Curriculum or the latest flavor of the week, whatever that is. Not actually something that invests in kids having another resources actually, you know, helpful to them. So. Anyway, I don't know how we got off on that tangent. So, no, that was really from the heart, because that's what I struggled with and that's what's help teachers struggle with, and I do find it very difficult that administrators say, oh yeah, we hear you help teachers with burnout.

And then when I tell 'em, okay, well these are the things that I can help them do. And then they're like, oh wait, you are gonna teach 'em to say no to me. 

Oh, yeah, 

I know. I don't package it like that. Yeah. But yeah, they're smart enough to know and then they're like, yeah, no, we'll find something else.

We'll go, we'll, we'll, we'll buy 'em, we'll do another, you know, coffee morning, we're bringing some style donuts that'll fix it. So Great. Let's, I I, 

I almost feel like for another time, man, I, I honestly, I, I would love to pick your brain, I mean, just on a personal conversation about that. Because your experiences are absolutely valuable.

True. And even your mixture of your education, plus your corporate world, I think is very intriguing.

Well, I think it's very, you know, and, and I have this kind of, like I had, like you said, everything science based. These are best practices of course. Like I'm not teaching air fairy stuff. I'm teaching stuff that is, you know, has a basis in science.

I try not to have teachers have their eyes glazed over and not everybody's passionate about neuroscience and CBT and all those things. Sure. So I keep it very actionable, but, yeah, it is a unique perspective, but it, it is just still hard to see my coworkers struggling and just being overwhelmed and yeah, even something good is like, oh, one more thing.

Right? It's one more thing. We, you don't wanna feel like you're giving teachers an assignment now, so the fact that you're making it so easy it is is really, is really, really helpful. So, lemme ask you this. When I was poking around your website you had this whole video library. It, there was like 22 topics and I liked it.

It went from like A to Z. They were just half from absenteeism to vaping and everything in between. Some of them. Yeah. Pretty, you know, not all so heavy, but like, you know, gossiping and procrastination Sure. And stuff that kids need. How, how is that free for everybody, whether they have your program or not, or tell me about that.

That absolutely. How will we use that? 

Actually, I mean, I'll just, all of that content is accessible to anyone. Okay. I mean, anyone can go and, and look at our resources. In fact, I'll share Yeah, and you don't have to input your email or anything like that. That's awesome. But, but specifically, I mean, obviously we, we provide those to schools and the ones that you were specifically talking about.

Right. We call 'em. I mean, that's part of our, kind of our restorative practice ones. Yeah. So we actually provide those. Two administrators, right, who often have to deal with disciplinary issues, right? All the way from, like you said, kids who are tardy, who are fighting, who are, you know, screaming or yelling, you know, discriminatory stuff at a football game or in the hallway or vaping in the bathroom or whatever.

And so we've created, right, these activities that are unbelievably simple. To assign to a student. They're short, they're corrective, right? They're packed with evidence stuff but that they can individually assign and include parents, by the way, in those activities. And our goal, of course, is. To become a part of that disciplinary process, but very much in a corrective way.

And, and if you happen to have a chance, and you certainly don't need to, but if you, if you go and just listen to the vibe in those videos, you will very quickly see that, right. We're, we're not there to preach or. Or to come down, but we're there to not just address the issue, but to give them intelligent reasons.

Right? That makes sense for them to just do better, right? Because we don't wanna just discipline negative behavior. We wanna teach the correct behavior. And this is, I mean, what you do as a teacher all the time, so, so that's what all of those videos either are, correct. More corrective discipline ones. Or of course, more on the student success side, which is more what counselors would use, right?

Whether it be, you know, kids who are struggling with body image or self-harm or sadness or anxiety, or parents who have divorced or grief, et cetera. And we've just created all of these activities, right? They don't have to go and look for, they've all been vetted, they've all been approved, and they can just provide it.

And so we've done the work and, and that's really been our hope, grace is we really just wanna simplify and give them the kinds of tools that they don't have to go looking around. For this last counselor that I was just telling you about, she had just, this was her first year and she was out of her mind.

Just excited because she, she had been looking for, I just need a library of approved curriculum. Like I, we don't have that. And she was so excited that this had been approved and that she could utilize it at any point. So we try to make it simple, but. Love. 

Yeah, no, it's really fantastic. And so I do want to, obviously in the show notes, I'm gonna put all the links you give me.

Of course. But I do wanna, of course, you know, there might be, there are probably some gonna, I already know there will be teachers listening, maybe even some admins and some counselors and they're like, this sounds awesome. And then like they're gonna, it is awesome 'cause they're gonna hear like there's no budget for this, but listen, I found a way to go look at some stuff for free.

So yeah, there's not a lot of gate keeping happen there. And they can as well, right? 

Yeah, 

yeah, exactly. Can utilize it. Absolutely. So if nothing else. Like if you, if, if because that's like one of my questions here is if somebody is really interested, they're listening, teachers are listening and they're like, oh my God, we need this.

You know, what are the next steps? What do they do? Yeah. Yeah. 

I mean, certainly they can go to school post.org or they can reach out to me. I mean, my, my, and I'll send this and you can include it. It's, yeah. I mean, they can just email me directly at Yuri IURI. It's a strange name@schoolpost.org. You can call us.

But I would love to tell you, we. We are ridiculously affordable. I, I promise you like I did 

look, I did look and I was like, yeah, we're, no, that's super ridiculously affordable. 

We're very affordable and we provide a tremendous impact. And so, and, and oftentimes we negotiate with schools and we make it affordable for them.

And so even if we wanted to pilot something, we could see that when find I looked it, 

I was like, come on, we can do that. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So lemme ask you this, because it's been a bit heavy and it is a heavy subject, isn't it? Let's end on something positive. Have you got like a success story for me?

Oh my gosh, so many. Grace. I'm sure you have. Seriously, so many. Seriously 

choose one of your favorite. So many. 

Well, let, let me, I'll give you, I'll, I'll tell you one for sure. Okay. That's, that's a little bit heavy, but it ends well. But let me just say particularly even with our text-based support, right?

So when I say we're a positive psychology service, right? Our goal is to enhance joy. Like that's what we try to do. Yep. And so we have 80% about of our engagement that happens between students and our team is positive. Like kids are talking about the good things in their life, right? That's right. Whether it's the volleyball game or the dance, or this or that or the other.

And we know that when we share, goodness, it's multiplied, right? Yeah. And then of course we have, you know, 15 to 20% of our engagement is with students who are actively struggling, right? All the way from very simple things like they're just struggling in their friendships with their students, or they're arguing with their parents, or they're overwhelmed, or they're falling behind in class.

Of course, all the way to kids who are, who are really struggling, right? Who have maybe gone through trauma or, or death or et cetera, right? And we had this, just this last year. There was a school in Wisconsin that had a shooting that happened by one of their students. Once again, this is a little bit heavy, but, and everybody knows about that school because this tragedy happened there and students passed and there was tragedy.

But, and, and you're not gonna believe it, but that exact same day in another school in Wisconsin. Our team was providing support to another student who themselves reported homicidal ideation. I'm telling you, it, it is just the, the coincidence is incredible, but we were, and number one, we had already had a relationship with this student.

We are already conversing with him, but we were able to connect that student. To administration who was then able to assist and help that student and obviously connect them with their family as well. And so I always say there's a school in Wisconsin that everybody knows about and one that nobody knows about.

And, and I'm not trying to say that we wanna be the school nobody 

knows about. Exactly. 

Exactly. And I'm not trying to say, you know, that we prevented a school shooting because I don't want to take that leap. But man, we have just had so many instances of, of students who are just so phenomenal. I can't tell you how much I just adore adolescents.

They're, I mean, I know that sometimes people are like kids these days, you know, but I just, I love their, I never, so I, they're 

idealism. The fact that you have five. Is really all the proof we need there. Exactly. But people who are like, oh, kids are awesome, and then don't have any, you're like, 

yeah, 

do you really feel that way?

But you have five. 

We've got five. And 

you're real excited to be a grand mom. Very jealous because i's am a. More than a decade older than you. And these children of mine have not produced anything just yet. And that's okay. That's up to them. 

That's right. They, it's up to them. They have 

my kids somebody told me the other day, oh, your kids do big work.

So yeah, I have one who is a social worker and works with primarily with, oh. Gosh, really difficult situations with childhood mental health. And then my son works with mentally and physically disabled adults and is works in a nonprofit program that gets them work and support whatever else.

And people are always like, oh my gosh, your children have big work. Do big work. And I'm like, my kids are broke. And and they will always look at me and say, mom, it was your fault. And I take that as a huge compliment. Yes, it was my fault. 

Yeah. Love that Grace. I was the role model 

in like, yeah, you can have everything in the world.

'cause we had a really cushy life when I was VP and then decide like, eh, it's not fulfilling. I need to do some more impactful with my life. And so yeah, they always kind of throw it back at me, mom, it's all your fault. But yeah, no. Wow. I I take great pride in that, but the fact that you, when you sit there and say, yeah, kids are amazing.

Yeah, sometimes people roll their eyes. But you have five, so I got five. You're legit. You're legit. And the fact that probably you still, still don talk to, to you sounds good. They, they all 

talk to me, which is wonderful. And, and, and, but, but I think some of that passion too, right, is, is obviously because I, I mean, I am involved in the community a lot and with, with schools and even other, you know, civil and religious type things.

But, but we have this really unique. Perspective because we, we, we do, I mean, we text and talk to thousands of teens throughout the country and they're remarkable. Like they just are like, and, and it's. It's tough out there. Wow. It is overwhelming. No, it's tough. I it's overwhelming. I stepped 

away, I took primary school for 20 years and then after I stepped away, like I was really, gosh, I just really missed interacting with kids.

And so last year I went back and I'm like, oh, I can still be useful somehow. So I decided to be a substitute teacher in San Jose, which is, you know, very big city. And I ended up being in like 10 or 12 different schools, whatever. And always I was getting caught. No, I had two blissful weeks in tk. That was just, it was everything wonderful about life, but I guess they have a hard time getting people to go to middle school and high school.

And so I went, and I'm not gonna say that there weren't a few days that I was abused and really stressed, but for the most part I came home and I was just gushing like, oh my God, these kids have so many interests and they're so great. And you know, it makes me feel really hopeful about the future and you know about how tough for them, I could see a whole big difference between schools that made them.

Lock away their cell phones when they got to school and schools that didn't like, that was a really fascinating study for me. But I was really having not spent a lot of time around high school kids other than my own and their friends. It was really, it really did fill me, you know, with hope and joy and, and kids are curious and they're smart and they're helpful and yeah.

What a tough time to be a, yeah. What a tough time to be a teenager. I'm so glad my kids are almost 30. Like they missed out on the whole so media, cell phone thing. Right. You know? 'cause that's. Such a hard thing to parent. It's, and so I am kind of pleased about that. But anyway, well, this has just been lovely.

But I, so I wanna tell everybody it's school post.org and I'm gonna put all the links in the yes. In the show notes. And certainly I feel like every teacher listening to this I know is gonna run and send an email to their administrator saying, we need this. But just one more time for teachers, if your administrator is like, absolute, oh, it sounds great.

But yeah. Then, you know, there's plenty of still free resources on there if you, there are lots of resources that's better than nothing, but the goal would be. For every kid to be getting these texts and feel like there is a, a, a different outlet for them that is, 

appreciate that Grace. That's very kind of No, I really, 

because for, like I said, I suffered 20 years in the D pulling my hair out.

Like what can I, what resources do I have for this kid? And it wasn't a lot. And so I really, really appreciate that. So this has been fantastic. I'll put everything in the show notes, your links, everything else. I hope you get inundated. I hope you have a nice big problem of just having the go.

Hi. More people. Wouldn't that be a lovely thing? That would be lovely. But I know, I'm just gonna say, I'm gonna get choked up and I know you know this, but I'm gonna say thank you. You have probably. Saved so many lives, and I know that you know that, but I don't know you. I have no reason to say it. Just wanna say thank you because the world does not have enough people who care about children.

I feel they do lip service to it, but. You've really done something about it, and that's really special. So thank you for that. Yeah, 

grace, you're awesome. I really appreciate that. That's been my day too. I said I have a daughter who's a social worker. That makes my day too. 

That's a, that's a lot, man.

That's a lot. You must have some incredible self-care habits of your own good for you because that is really for teachers to say, yeah, we burn out, but. Trust me, social workers, I don't know how my daughter does it. But that is certainly a labor of love. All right, so everybody I go look at the, the links in the show notes.

And until next time, I just wanna tell my listeners, you already know what I'm gonna say from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for all the things that you do for other people's children. The world needs your passion and your talents. And until next time, create your own path. And bring your own sunshine.