 I'm watching all of you pop in as we are joining for this virtual summit welcome to the Mental Health and Schools Conference. I am Maria LaRose and I'm so honored to be here and to serve as your moderator for this very special gathering. And I gratefully acknowledge and respect the Matsquee, Quentin, Katesie, and Semi Amu First Nations people on whose tradition I live, I play, I work, and whose historical relations with the land continue on this day. And on this day, I look out the window and see a lot of wonderful rain. We need the rain. It keeps things lush and it's very green out there with some colors popping through. I had the pleasure of moderating the first and the second Mental Health Conference. So those were live remember those days when we used to meet people like face to face in person. And that was in 2018 and 2019 and I have a feeling that a lot of you were there as well. So welcome back to you and welcome for the first time for those of you who were not there. I'm always really happy to be in the in the company of educators. I don't know why but I've always been really interested in learning. I was one of those kids who held school in my parents' garage in the summer in trail British Columbia. And I'm sure the other kids in the neighborhood didn't love it, but for some reason I just really love the idea of learning and teaching especially interested in always interested in how our mental and our social and our emotional well being impacted that learning. And I've come over the years over all of the times that I've had conversations like this with you to really appreciate the work that all of you do. And the important place that you have in the minds and the hearts of our children and our grandchildren, our grandchildren, and I promise not to show any pictures of my grandchildren unless you absolutely insist. Two and a half and one more on its way. And so when I was invited to moderate this this gathering after the first two I jumped for joy to be with you today. We are 300 strong and I'm grateful that you made the time to make mental health and schools a priority. It's really appropriate this year that we're meeting this week because it is mental health week in Canada. And I didn't know this before but it's been 71 years that the Canadian Mental Health Association has designated this week as mental health week and that means that schools and communities and businesses all come together and to do something to acknowledge the mental health of Canadians and so today we continue that tradition. So I'm curious about where you're coming from I could see as you were as you were checking in that you were putting, I'm just going out to the chat that you were putting your, you're where you were coming from in the chat but let's just see some more of that. Let's see give me a minute to get used to this. Thank you for coming from the ministry people coming from my screams Scottish say the tooth. Just carry on. I know so many of you and just this this is a good time to just look into chat see how to figure out how to do that to the right of your screen if you haven't done it already. Open now again. Hello everybody. Let's see. I could stay here or did you see who you are. Thank you for joining us. I'll continue to watch chat all day to see what thoughts you're having this conference. You know I always ask before I do anything what why this why now, and this conference continues the work of the mental health and school strategy. The theme of course is mental health in the classroom this year and the focus is embedding mental health throughout all learning environments, so everybody's conscious of it. To technically two half days together will learn more about the state of mental health and well being for children and families and of course the adults in the system as well from a variety of perspectives. We'll be looking at and hearing about the latest research related to mental health and well being in schools. We will share some practical strategies which is always great. And we will be inspired by innovative initiatives that are going on right here in British Columbia I wish we could hear from all of you about that because I know that you are all working on really interesting initiatives in your own districts. Of course to will hear from young people themselves who are involved in their communities in their schools to create safe spaces for all. One of the things that we created for you today is what we're calling a note catcher is mine right here note catcher and it's focusing. That's really intended just to help you capture your ideas new reflections as they arise. If that's the way you're you learn and take it information. And you can put some of your own insights make notes of books or resources you want to follow up on. You can either download this document as you can see the old school I downloaded and printed it but you could also just open the PDF version and write right into it and then save it for yourself for later. And if you have not yet done that, go on to the note catcher downloaded is used it in in printed it out or used it online you can do that right now. And in the chat, I think right now as we're speaking that information will come to you about how you can where you can find it. And I'm just watching it'll come about how you can find it and how you can print it. So one more thing. When you registered we asked you, how do you want to show up today. We asked you to share a word. I'm just looking for it. There we go. How you want to show up today. And we're just going to know Julie if you would just share that screen that share the, sorry, the word cloud that we created this technology there we are okay. There's the word cloud that we created using the words that you submitted. Isn't it amazing. How do you want to show up to the connection. I want to learn support, looking for support providing support knowledge, and you know what you could actually continue to add right now live in the chat right now you you can see directions about how to go to metrometer very quickly and, and just that code put in that code I'd be very interested to see if there are more words coming up, but some of these words might resonate with you they might closely align with what you're already thinking. For me it's kind of a reminder that we're all not only today but always all in this together. And I so appreciate that you took the time to lean in and to set your intention. And, and encourage you to think about that intention as, as we move through the day together. So, oh it's here that just from the awareness I think more were added awareness collaboration determination. Beautiful words. You'll notice on the, on the second we notice on on this good on this on the, what is this called the game capture that the first question is about your intention. And we all know that really to be able to set an intention to stay with an intention that it's really important to stay focused and to be present. Not always easy to do and you have a lot of screens going at the same time but that's the most important thing for today for us to be able to absorb for ourselves internally in our hearts and then our minds what's going on. In my mind. We have set aside some time for all of us to get grounded to, to really come together as a community, and to do grounding activity, and here to lead us in the activity is one of the keynote keynote speakers from today. I know her. She's Dr Vanessa Le point and she is waiting on the sidelines to join us to help to ground us. So please welcome Dr Vanessa Le point. Thank you Maria, and it is absolutely my honor to be joining all of you today. We have 300 strong. That's a lot of big people out in our province who are decidedly here to champion children. And if I think about who it is that's here today in the number of children present past and future that you represent that's an extraordinary number. And on behalf of all of those kids. Thank you for showing up the way that you do and the way that you are. Thank you for showing up here today. And what I'd like to do now is welcome you into your minds and into your bodies and into this present moment, so that you can be very available to receiving all it is that's coming your way over the next couple of days. And as preparing for this, I got to thinking about the role that each of you have out in our world, and the idea of mental health, particularly at this time in our history. And it occurred to me that there's a couple of things that are very key in order for all of us to be able to remain grounded and present and available to the work that is in front of us. And one of those is to accept the understanding that all there is is this moment, and this moment is perfect. All there is is this moment, and this moment is perfect that we are constantly receiving in front of us, exactly what it is that is needed or good for our souls, in terms of our own growth and development. In the wise words around us, it's about being here now. The other piece that's really important is to be able to connect in a way that's fueled by compassion with the children who we are championing. And sometimes in order to connect with those kids, we are well served to connect with the versions of ourselves that were once those children. I often say we are all the ages that we have ever been, which means that even though you're all walking around in the world and grown up bodies now, within you lives, the experience of all of the ages that you have ever been your two year old self and your four year old self and your nine year old self and your 12 year old self and your 15 year old self and your 19 year old self, all the way on up to present day. For our grounding activity today. What I want to do is welcome you to join your current adult version of self with those former child versions of self, especially the school aged child versions of self, so that you can show up in ways fueled by compassion to be fully present to the moment to be available to the learning and the offerings that are coming your way over the next couple of days and indeed to take that openness with you back to wherever it is that you have joined from today. With that, I would invite you just to take a big deep breath and sit quietly wherever it is that you're joining from today. And take a moment to become aware of your surroundings. You just want to sit and really think about where it is that you are located in space and in time. As part of grounding ourselves is often helpful to be aware of some of our physical environment so feel your back touching the chair that you're sitting in. Feel your clothes on your body. Take a minute to hear as many different sounds as you can hear. Feel the air in the room. And to know that just for now, just for a few short minutes. There's no place that you have to go. And there's nothing that you have to do. Just be here now. You can close your eyes if you haven't already done so. And become aware of your breathing. Feel the air as it comes in and the air as it goes out. If you have interrupting thoughts, that's okay. The important thing is just to notice them and let them pass by. Kind of like the sentences going across the bottom of the TV screen on a program, announcing the weather. Allow them to pass. As you continue your breathing, you can hold on to your consciousness as much as you want. Or you can let go in ways that you know, allow you to relax. You learned to hold on and to let go as a child. And you know just exactly how much to hold on and how much to let go. You learned that perfect balance when you were an infant. You learned to breathe in, hold on long enough to get oxygen to all your blood cells. And to let go and feel the air go out. You might begin to feel a little heaviness in your eyelids, your jaw, your arms or your hands. Or you might feel a real lightness in all parts of you, whatever it is that you are feeling. Know that that is exactly right for you. Now, I want you to invite in your mind, some childhood memories. Just begin floating back in time. You can remember your first school days. Your best friend in those days. You can remember a kind teacher. Or maybe a kind neighbor. You can remember a house you lived in right before you started school. What color was that house? Now remember what it was like to start school. What did it feel like for you on that day? What was it like in your house when you started to go to school? Do you remember your very first day of school? Do you remember going to a new school and being nervous? Do you remember starting high school? Do you remember being at school and feeling a little uncertain about how an exam would go? Or about how friendships would play out? How did you get to school? Were you ever afraid to go to school? Was there anything that scared you about that time? Who was your favorite teacher? Imagine the playground. See your school age self on that playground. What are you doing? What are you wearing? Walk up to your school age self and imagine you too could become one. Now you're your school age self looking up at grown up you. You see grown up you as a gentle and wise person. Hear your grown up voice saying warm and kind things to school age too. Little school age me, you can be who you are at school. You can stand up for yourself and I'll support you. It's okay to learn to do things your own way. It's okay to think about things and try them out before you make them your own. You can trust your own judgments. You need to only take the consequences of your choices. You can do things your own way and it's okay to disagree. Because I love you just the way that you are. You can trust your feelings. And if you're afraid, you can let me know. I want you to know that it's okay to be afraid and uncertain. We can talk about it. You can choose your own friends. You can dress the way the other kids dress or you can dress your own way. You deserve to have the things that you want. And I'm going to want to be with you. No matter what. I'm going to be with you now. At school age, do you feel whatever it is that you feel? If you feel like hugging grown up you, then you can do that. And slowly let yourself become your adult self again. Tell that school age child inside of you that you will be here for them from now on. They can count on you. I want you to be aware that you have just reclaimed your school age self. Start walking forward in time. See your high school. What color is it? See your high school best friend. Hear a favorite teenage song. Walk forward in time into your early adult life. See the house that you live in now. See the room. Experience where you are right now. Wiggle your toes. Feel the energy come up through your legs. Take a deep breath. And make a sound as you exhale. And feel yourself fully present. Restored in mind. Embody. Connected with the child version of self. Connected to the students that you represent. And connected to the learning. That is coming your way. Be. Here. Now. Hi there, Vanessa. Thank you so much. You see what happened. When you start to do grounding exercises. I just get too relaxed. Perfect. Thank you for that. It's really wonderful. What a great exercise. I started remembering myself as a little girl in that garage. It's an important exercise. Thank you for that. I hope all of you feel grounded and ready and really. More like community. I know you've been spending a lot of time over these last couple of years on zoom and virtual settings like this. And I know probably like me, but I don't know if you've heard of this. I don't know if you've heard of this. I don't know if you've heard of this. I don't know if you've heard of this. And Vanessa just helped us with that. She'll be back in. In just a little while with her keynote presentation. So thanks for that. But right now. We are so fortunate in this province to be joined by or right now to be joined by the minister of mental health and addictions. The honor will she the Malcolm sin. Minister Malcolm sin was elected. She's the vice chair of the cabinet working group on mental health, addictions at homelessness. And a member of the cabinet committee on social initiative. So she's clearly committed to actions related to the social determinants of health and mental health. Of course. Please welcome now minister Sheila Malcolm sin. Thank you so much, Maria. And, and thank you, Vanessa. Doctor LaPoint for that. Opening that was a very, I was a real gift. I'm joining you from the territory of the like one can speaking people here at the legislature. I was so nice and ex-quimal first nations. I ordinarily hail from San Amo territory. And I know that's why I represent. And I want to recognize also today. We are. Marking red dress day. In honor of murdered and missing. Women. And I just want to give from my heart, my special thanks to educators that. Have worked so hard to have our young people in British Columbia ready when the revelations, the confirmations of unmarked graves found at residential schools. To be in my own community in Nanaimo to be walking around streets of. Victoria on our way to some of the vigils to recognize. The. The lost ones to see that it was young people wearing their orange shirts and. Bringing their parents to vigils. This is one of these perfect examples of. Of system change. That's truly youth led. That's because those lessons and that resilience and recognition came into the schools first. I'm so proud of our British Columbia education system and of our teachers for making that possible. And on red dress. Day, I think of that especially. I'm really grateful to be here with my friend and colleague, Jennifer, white side minister, white side. And this really big and distinguished community of. Of leaders, academics, educators. We are all united in a common goal to help our children thrive and. Survive. The last two years have been incredibly challenging in British Columbia. We hear from families and educators have been through so much extreme weather and climate change worries. The drug toxicity crisis. We've been through so much of this. Confirmations of unmarked graves at former residential schools and the pandemic that has uprooted everybody's sense of normalcy. Some have been grappling with high levels of stress and anxiety. Others have felt grief and isolation. Loneliness and mental illness. We feel the great magnitude. Of need for mental health and substance use supports in our community. We've been through so much of this. We've been through so much of this. And our government's resolved and working urgently to make sure that everyone who reaches out for help receives it. We're not there yet. There's more for us to do. I'm really honored to serve as minister of mental health and addiction. So my friend and predecessor, Darcy was the first in Canada. When this ministry was created in 2017. Many of you contributed to. This is in 2018. Minister Darcy heard from thousands of British Columbians about what it would look like. What is the roadmap to create a seamless integrated system of mental health and addiction care? One that we did not have in 2017. One that we are working hard to build out now. But the first priority, the cornerstone of pathway to hope is investments in children and youth. One that we are working hard to build. One that we are working hard to build. Knowing that their well-being is a priority for our government is something that I want all of you to hear. We recognize that investing in young people first sets them up for a life of success and really does get the kind of systems change that we are determined to do. In this four-year term of government that we've been given this is our time for systems change. And this is one example. We want every child to have their very best possible experience. The first step of mental health and substance use problems have their onset during these four-mative years. And that's why early intervention is so critical. We want to stop small problems from becoming big problems down the road. And we know that the earlier we provide support, better the outcome. Children, youth and families in BC have particularly suffered from the fragmented system of care that we have. In 2017, we have been investing at an unprecedented level, 140 million dollars in new and expanded youth mental health supports. And then during the pandemic, we did even more to scale up services and bring in new ways for young people to access care. We know that more than 28,000 children and youth receive community-based mental health services every year. But we know that children need more. We know that in the last year's budget, 97 million for mental health and substance use care for young people. And that budget is rapidly evolving and advancing that vision and the ambition of the pathway to hope. And the very strong mandate that the premier has given me. That vision includes expanding the network of boundary centers for a total of 23. And we know that in the last year's budget, we have been investing a lot of money into inspiring integrated health and wellness centers. They're welcoming, they're friendly spaces, they offer primary care, mental health and substance use services, peer support, social services for young people ages 12 to 24. Already we have locations open in Campbell River, Victoria, Kelowna, North Van, PG, Vancouver, Terrace, Pentecton, and all of the locations. And we have a range of locations. We have a range of locations like Berence lake,據mox Valley, Cranbro, Langley, Squamish, Surrey, Port Hardy and Williams Lake. We're aiming for some of those to be opened by September this year. We've also strengthened boundary virtual services. Access through the boundary BC app. And I hope you'll download that boundary B.C. and absolutely youth focused. There's also a Foundry website and a phone number. So youth who cannot go into a physical center can get drop in counseling, virtual appointments and peer support. In the first eight months, since the app was launched over 3,300 young people use the app for virtual services with over 4,800 booked appointments. 80% of the young people that come to Foundry are experiencing a high level of distress and many of them rate their mental health as poor. 47% of the young people that come into Foundry doors have thought about suicide in the past 90 days. But Foundry is helping to change that. Over 90% of youth strongly agree that having a lot of services in one place makes it easier to get help and that services at Foundry meet their needs. Foundry is doing really an incredible job of youth reporting on their own outcomes. And if any of you get a chance to visit at Foundry in your own community, the folks there are so proud of their work and really proud to show you around. It's really transforming how young people access healthcare and social services and changing the lives of children. In another area, we really know how important it is to provide early supports for people experiencing serious mental illness. So we're expanding early psychosis intervention, adding 100 new full-time professionals across BC. Getting treatment early has big benefits for people living with psychosis and can vastly improve their futures. We've also increased funding to support youth living with eating disorders. It's a life-threatening mental and physical illness often misunderstood and particularly experienced by young people who are funding every health authority and the NGO Looking Glass. This means young people living with eating disorders and their families, including those in rural and remote communities will have better access to the health that they need. In another area, we're also doubling youth addiction treatment beds, adding 123 new publicly funded substance use treatment and withdrawal management beds to increase availability in every health authority. This is an addition to the 20 new substance use treatment beds we opened in Chilliwack at the Traverse Facility in 2020. We also know how important it is to bolster support for youth in school. That's why we're working with Ministry of Education to provide nearly 175 million for mental health support. The mental health and school strategy embeds mental health and substance use programs in the education system. Over the next two days, we'll hear how this strategy is helping to build resiliency, skills and knowledge. I am so eager to hear about the challenges that educators are experiencing, what you're seeing in the classrooms and how our government can further support mental wellbeing in classrooms, hallways and schoolyards. We all wanna keep our children safe and well. And I recognize that there is a lot more work ahead of us, but through the collaboration of such a devoted community of practitioners and families like you, I'm confident that we will get there. I'm grateful for your work and attention. I wish you all the best in your conversations the next two days. Thank you, Minister Malkinson. Up next to give her greetings as well as the Minister of Education and Child Care, the Honorable Jennifer Whiteside. Minister Whiteside was elected as an MLA for a new Westminster in October, 2020. And over her career though, she's championed a wide range of social justice issues from accessible, post-secondary education, affordable public childcare to Medicare, health equity. She's worked for community organizations for labor unions at the provincial and national level. And she's here to say hello to you right now. Please welcome Minister Jennifer Whiteside. Good, good morning everyone. And thank you so much for the introduction, Maria. It's a pleasure to be joining you this morning from the traditional territory of the Likungun speaking people of the song He's a Squimalt First Nations. And I hail from the territory of the Helped Manum speaking people in US Minster. That's Coast Salish territory. And I wanted just to express my gratitude to Song He's Nation Councilor Norman Gary Samfors. Welcome today, as welcome, as well as to Dr. LaPoint, thank you so much for that grounding exercise this morning. It was really, it's so important to take a moment to stop and breathe and connect yourself. And I appreciate the opportunity to do that this morning. And thank you very much, Maria, again, for moderating this important event. And I do wanna really express my gratitude to all of you for coming together and sharing in this way over the next couple of days. All of the learning and the listening and the idea of sharing to find solutions to the challenges that many of us are facing on a daily basis is so important to the work that's happening across our K to 12 education system. And it is so important to come together to share and sort through what we need to do, where we need to go, how we can better support students. I also wanna thank my colleague, the Honorable Sheila Malkinson for all of the incredible work that she does, her advocacy, her tireless focus on improving and the mental health of British Columbians generally. And specifically her deep concern for what's happening with children and youth across our province. And we have, I think, as you know, a remarkable team in the ministry of education who work on this issue day in, day out and who have helped to construct a really amazing couple of days for you to engage in today. Also thanks to everyone joining the conference this week, Dr. Lapointe, Goldie Hahn, Dr. Jean Clinton, Dr. Jillian Roberts, Phyllis Webstad, who will be really, really wonderful to hear from, Lisa Bayless, and of course, Dr. Gabor Matei. It's a very rich and nourishing experience that we'll have over the next couple of days. I think I need to start, just to reflect a bit on the pandemic. And I keep saying every time I talk about this that we're really running out of adjectives to describe the impact of the experience that we have had collectively over the last more than two years now. Unprecedented just doesn't seem to really cut it anymore. But indeed it has been that and much more. There has been extraordinary loss and grief and coming together and community building. I mean, it's been, I think, a real emotional roller coaster for everyone in our communities over this period of time. And the incredible work that has gone in through our education system to putting health and safety first in schools and to putting students first in the response to the pandemic and education has been really nothing short of remarkable. The understanding the importance of keeping kids connected to not only their learning, but to all of the other services and supports that they access through schools, the mental health supports, the food programs, the important social and emotional connections that happen at schools. That was really identified as a priority early on and credit to our public health officials who worked very hard in supporting all of our partners to ensure that we could achieve that. I think we know that at the heart of every wonderful community is an incredible school that is a real hub where students come and they feel welcome and welcomed and nourished and inspired and it's a place for also community coming together. We know that schools provide essential support for the academic, social and emotional development of all students and that they're such a critical part of our communities. And we also know how much families rely on schools so that their children get all of the supports that they need. You know that I know you're all familiar with the work that the BCCDC has been doing through their speak surveys to really connect with British Columbians about how they're feeling about the impact of the pandemic and their experience of the pandemic and what we've really learned from those studies is just the incredible importance to family well-being as well in terms of the role of schools in supporting continued access to schools. So that survey, their first survey in 2020 told us that 60% of households with children reported increased child stress while 79% of households with children reported decreased connection with friends amid school closures and other pandemic response measures. Not really was speaking to the early part of the pandemic when the decision had to be made to close schools for a period of time. And it really helped frame the decisions around pushing so hard to make sure we had safety measures in place that would allow us to keep schools open during the remainder of the pandemic. And I think as we're coming out of it, starting to come out of the pandemic now, we realize that now more than ever we need to prioritize the health and well-being of children and youth. There is no question that there is a lot of, there are a lot of young people who have experienced stress and anxiety in their lives as a result of the pandemic. And I just really think about the students, the high school students in particular who miss graduation, who missed so many of the important markers in their senior years of high school. That will be, that will, that will is something they will carry with them, of course, for the rest of their lives, this kind of unprecedented experience. And I think about the really young kids who have never, who's experience of school has been completely immersed in the pandemic and how do those kids sort of transition into a different way of being in school. And you layer on top of that some of what's already been discussed, the extreme weather events that we've experienced over the last year in particular. And the confirmation, the sort of uncovering of unmarked graves of children at former residential school sites, validating what communities, indigenous communities long knew about the impact of the residential school system. And of course, all of that is showing up in classrooms. All of that shows up in schools. And I know that there have been over the course of the last number of months, certainly since I, you know, May 2021, it's really sort of, you know, I mean, I think a lot about the, that first discovery, it comes to Shwebmek and the impact of that in conversations I had with educators and leaders in our, in the K-12 system at the time about, make, you know, ensuring that there were supports to help support the conversations, the difficult conversations that were happening in classrooms about that at the time, and that continue to happen. And I think also now about the war in Ukraine and about the volatility globally that is impacting the experience that we're all having. And in some respects, it feels so remote, but in many respects, it's right here. We're living the, also living the impacts of it. And we are, you know, going to be in a position to be welcoming, we've already welcomed some small numbers of Ukrainian families, but more will be coming. And that too, you know, is, you know, the sort of the stresses and strains and anxiety around that, of course, also show up in classrooms as well. And there's such a, something really profoundly inspiring in a sense about the commitment of the Ukrainian people to education because in the early days of the Russian invasion, you know, as hundreds of thousands, millions of people were being displaced. There were hundreds of thousands of children and youth connected to virtual classrooms, whether they were inside Ukraine or whether they were in Poland or had been displaced to other countries that, I mean, the drive to education is strong because I think that everyone recognizes that it is such an important foundation for a healthy society. So all of this volatility, no question, causes stress and can cause a sense of fear and anxiety. That all shows up in schools. And I know that, and I want you to know that we understand how incredibly important it is that improving the work that we do to support mental health in schools is critically important and it's at the forefront of our work. There is much more work for us to do, but we've made some progress. We are working every day as Minister Melkinson outlined about the pathway to hope and are part of that in the mental health and school strategy, that vision to create a sort of a whole school system that promotes positive mental health where mental health promotion is embedded in all aspects of our education system, including in the culture and the leadership, in the curriculum and the learning environments. And that strategy, as you know, really focuses on three main elements, the compassionate systems, leadership, capacity building and mental health in the classroom. And these elements are guiding us as we work as a system with our partners to create more supportive environments for students and staff in our schools. Last spring, our ministry also created a mental health school startup working group along with the BCCDC to help identify and work on issues pertaining to the transition sort of back to school and back to a more sort of normal schedule in school and really wanting to look at sort of, you know, what the experience was in other jurisdictions, what were the best practices and how do we understand the impact of COVID-19 on children and youth and on learning environments. And so that working group, which includes the BCCDC, BC Children's Hospital, the Foundry, the BCTF, the First Nations Education Steering Committee, the Doctors of BC and WorkSafe, among other education partners, developed the key principles and strategies for the K to 12 mental health promotion in schools to guide and support mental health promotion focused on fostering resilience in strength-based and trauma-informed ways. And we partnered with the BCTF to enhance mental health resources for schools through mental health regional listening sessions and collaborative resource review and development. And, you know, I am very committed to continuing this work across government to listen to experts, to students and families, to ensure that we're providing an environment that supports all of the mental health needs of children today. In this school year, our ministry's $10 million budget to support mental health and wellbeing in schools has allowed us to continue to make progress in the support of students. We've partnered with UBC's Human Early Learning Partnership to create Provincial Compassionate Systems Leadership, the CSL network, to build a province-wide approach to support the full range of CSL work in the province. And that network is currently providing every school district, as well as the Federation of Independent School Association, the opportunity to receive support to develop custom training plans for their schools. We've also partnered with the BC Council of Administrators of Inclusive Education to study how students disproportionately impacted by the pandemic may need additional supports to recover. And that study was supported by Dr. Hasina Samji and Rachel Guzan of SFU. And that really looked at the successes, the challenges, the experience in education during the pandemic through interviews with school-directed administrators of inclusive education. We also held regional listening sessions with BCTF and FISA members to learn about the strategies and resources being used during the pandemic to support mental health and wellbeing in schools. And I really look forward to a summary of report of those sessions and the learnings from those experiences. And of course, we host this very conference as part of our commitment to mental health and school strategy, which embeds mental health and substance use programs and services for students throughout the education system and expands on our government's mental health and substance abuse care road map laid out in a pathway to hope. And it's another way that we're helping build capacity in the K-12 system through collaboration to support this important work for children, youth, and adults, so adults in our school system. So I hope that you find this year's offerings and speakers beneficial and helpful in embedding mental health wellbeing through all learning environments. And I wanna thank you again for your time, your energy, your curiosity that has gone into, I was gonna go into this year's conference. I can't really say enough about how critical the work you're doing is to the future of our comments, to the future of the children and youth in our education system as we strive to make lasting change for kids in British Columbia. So thank you so much for all that you do. Have a wonderful next couple of days. Thank you so much, Minister Whiteside. I was watching some people in the chat while Minister Whiteside was speaking and one of the comments that resonated for many people was that schools are hubs. And the statement was, let's keep working together to make sure that we become even stronger hubs and strengthening the mental health and wellbeing of schools requires really a collective effort as you all know, and that includes teachers and school staff, family, students, and also community partners. And one of those partners over the years has been mined up for almost two decades now, if you can believe it, BC Minister of Education and Child Care has been working with MindUp on the whole child, whole school, whole community transformation and they support educators through resources and training and also for families and for other adults as well. Well, the founder of MindUp joins us now to send her greetings as we embark on our time together. Here she is now, Goldie Hawn. Hello everyone, I wish I could be with you in person. I can't thank you enough for being together and discussing all the things about mental health and the issues that we're dealing with today with our educators and our children at the same time. But the one thing I have to say because I am a great lover of Vancouver as you know is if it wasn't for you, if it wasn't for the people in Vancouver, the school board and all of you saying, let's go, let's try it, let's try MindUp because it was an idea that I had that I thought, how are we gonna help our teachers and children create a better experience in the classroom for more mental health, for more joy, for more ways that children can learn better without the angst and knowing how to control their emotions, if you will, their negative emotions. In the meantime, I just wanna say it wasn't for you and all of the acceptance of me coming there and doing something absolutely crazy like putting all these different elements together in one program, not just one program on one subject, but taking all the holistic issues around the brain and mental health and mindfulness and all of these ways of positive psychology to bring together for children their well-being and thus the well-being of our teachers. So I am so grateful and I'm really, really happy to be talking to you today, even though I can't see anybody, but I wish I was with you because Vancouver is my second home. There's no doubt about it. Anyway, be well, have a wonderful conference today and God bless all of you. Thank you, Goldie. So our first keynote presenter today, you have met earlier, she helped to ground us, Dr. Vanessa LePointe, and she is an author, she is a parenting educator, she is a registered psychologist, and I know so many of you have seen her presentations in your schools or in your community because she's been supporting families for almost 20 years. She's had experience in community mental health and she is also involved in mental health in the school system. So she's here to remind us that even though sometimes the task of supporting the mental health and well-being of children and youth can seem daunting, the most powerful solution is always connection. And before she joins us, I just wanted to remind you that if you have any, or to tell you that if you have any questions, as Dr. LePointe is talking, could you put them into the chat? I noticed some people are using the chat. Let me just tell you where you find that just in case you haven't. On the right-hand side, you'll see the bubble, the talking bubble. I'm sure you know about chat, you've been on so many Zooms and things, but for this platform, look to the right-hand side of the screen and just click on that thought bubble there. And there we go. So it says questions can be shared here. So the reason I'm asking you to do this is because I'll be watching your questions come in that way. And then after Dr. LePointe has finished her presentation, I'll join her again. And I'll ask as many of your questions as possible, at least try to pick up the theme. So please look for the chat. And as these questions emerge, yes, note them in your note taker, but please share them as well so that I can address them. So after all of that, and we'll be doing that with all of the presenters today, I'll repeat it again. After all of that, please welcome, joining us now, again, Dr. LePointe. Thank you, Maria. You know, I had the opportunity as I was preparing this keynote to look ahead at what's coming for all of you today and tomorrow. And it occurred to me that you are getting truly the best combination of the very many layers that necessarily must feed into our understanding of what it will be to come through the other side of this pandemic, not just having survived it, but having indeed figured out how to thrive in spite of it, how to thrive actually because of it. And so what I want to do for you to set the stage for what is to come is to pull the lens way back, to walk you into an understanding experientially of what it is that you all have just come through, what it is that children and students have just come through and how it is that we can actually mine the gold from these challenging times and put that towards a solution in terms of being certain that we all are able to stand strong and walk forward and be all that it is that we're meant to be in this thing called life. To that end, I want to share my screen with you. And as Maria mentioned, I'm gonna talk for a little bit and then we'll have an opportunity to have a bit of a conversation around all of this. To begin, I wanna talk through where it is that your brains have gone, where it is that children's brains have gone and how it is that we can come out of that rather than stay stuck in it. And to do that, we have to understand that collectively over the past two plus years, we have been in very unsettled, chaotic, unstable, uncertain times, not just because of the pandemic, but because of a host of events around our province, around our nation and indeed around the world. When the human mind is open to all of that and receiving all of that and experiencing all of that, it's actually very subconsciously wise. It knows to put the brakes on certain things and knows to turn the volume up on other things in order to ensure our survival. One of the things that it turns the volume up on is this thing called the negativity bias where we become velcro to the negative and Teflon to the positive. And that's not because we wanna be downers, but rather because our brain's job during times of crisis is to make sure that we are looking out for the next possible attack, the next possible thing that's going to come around to the corner and startle and surprise us that we have to be ready for all of that. And so we can find especially during these chronic periods of chaos and distress that our brains actually reset towards this negative kind of orientation. And I invite you to become aware of that within yourselves and also aware of that as you interact with students that this is basic human survival 101. And we are encouraged to begin to flex the other part of the brain that allows us to see that there is hopefulness, that allows us to see the incredible capacity for adaptation that each of us as human beings has within us. And at the heart of adaptation lies our space for resilience. And so when we can begin to walk out of this negativity sometimes through nothing but sheer determination we begin to step our way towards hopefulness and change in the other direction. Now another thing that goes on with the brain which is actually quite closely related to this negativity bias is that you become hypervigilant. This is because your sympathetic nervous system has kind of turned the volume up. It recognizes that things around you don't feel entirely settled and safe and it wants for you to be ready just in case. So if any of you noticed that you had changes in your sleep patterns over the last couple of years. Some of you maybe slept a lot more and some of you maybe slept a lot less or founds that you had interrupted sleep. If you found that there were significant changes in your eating habits. Some of you maybe ate a little more. Some of you maybe a little bit less. It's because of how your body is processing all of that nervous energy. There's that profound connection between the mind and the body and so these things kind of wash through and that hypervigilance is something that well it serves us if we're about to be attacked by a saber-toothed tiger. It doesn't really serve us when we're sitting in the middle of math class and trying to put things together. And so we wanna know that that's just our brain taking care of us. Sometimes when I talk with my younger clients we talk about it being a little bit of our sticky tricky brain. The brain that wants to hold on to all of this stuff just in case so that we can be prepared for the next thing that's coming. Now, another thing that goes on in the brain and this one is very curious because it doesn't always at first glance make a lot of sense is that we really want to be with our people when the going gets tough. We seek connection. And interestingly over the last couple of years we've had a lot of interruptions in the way that we are able to seek out contact and closeness with one another. So as much as we wanted that connection we weren't always able to establish that. On the other hand, as much as we want to be with our people and feel the comfort and the closeness and the security that comes with being with our people we also will find that we have these knee-jerk reactions to our people. So we're both seeking contact and closeness with them but we're often also really rejecting that contact and closeness. And so if you've felt that there's a little bit of push and pull in some of your relationships that might be personal relationships might be professional relationships. I'm sure that you've seen this playing out amongst your students at times as well. That is a natural reaction of the human brain again, going to protection mode because it requires emotional vulnerability to be connected to each other when you are connected you stand to suffer loss. And so if you actually have the idea that loss might be coming your way you can what we call defensively to defend or protect self defensively detach where you don't wanna be in relationship. You want everybody to just go the H-E-Double how he sticks away because that's making you feel really uncomfortable. And so connection as you're going to soon here is at the heart of how it is that we're going to find our way through these challenging times. And we have to just be aware that when we're having those real responses that we want to just be done with everybody around us that that's again just the brain attempting to protect us. The other thing your brains are gonna do is become a logical because when the brain is in crisis Dr. Daniel Siegel who I'm sure many of you have heard of is a guiding light in the mental health field for children and indeed for adults. He talks about this concept of flipping your lid where the downstairs brain which I'm representing here by my fist he often uses the hand model where the downstairs brain is represented by the thumb and then the upstairs brain the cortical outer layers of the brain are represented by my other hand sitting over top. The downstairs brain is the emotional heart of the brain that's where all of the neural circuitry lives that drives your emotional reactions. It is not a thoughtful part of the brain it's not a part of the brain that plans or premeditates things. It's a reactive part of the brain that's really tuned into your emotional systems. The upper layers, the outer layers the cortical layers that's where rational thought logic and problem-solving abilities are housed. When the downstairs brain the emotional brain becomes activated it gets a little weeble wobbly and everybody knows that the secret to a solid structure is a solid foundation. So when that foundation gets weeble wobbly the problem is that we flip our lid the structure no longer is solid the lid is flipped. And if you remember what lives in the lid logic, problem-solving ability, rational thought. So when you flip your lid which by the way does not mean it actually lifts off your brain. Somebody asked me that question once and I was like no actually because you would die that would be a very traumatic brain injury. It's just that it's ceasing to function and you can become illogical. You can really struggle to problem-solve to put things together to feel like you can grab words to access thought. And because our adult brains can be absolutely at the effect of that. And for kids who do not have the benefit of experience to kind of buffer them against that they can be even more at the effect of that. So we want to be aware. And then finally, we've got some behavioral Fs four of them in fact. And these are F words to be really aware of in your students because they are the go-to responses that will be happening when kids are alarmed and when you are alarmed. If you have an event playing out around you whatever it is and keep in mind that we've had these big picture setting events but those things become kind of the foundation or sort of the setting background upon which our day-to-day lives play out. And so now somebody slams the door somebody doesn't do as you've asked of them or whatever it is, there's an event. And because the backdrop is kind of a heightened level of reactivity and anxiety our interpretation of that event can go more quickly to alarm. And if the brain interprets an event as alarming then the reaction will be fueled by one of the four behavioral Fs. You're probably very familiar with fight or flight because we tend to talk about that a lot. And fight can look like aggression that's outwardly directed or inwardly directed. It can also look like aggression that's physical and or emotional. So fight can come out in a lot of ways. Flight is, you're going to get out of there, right? You want to get away from the sabertooth tiger. And so flight can also be something that's outwardly directed and or something that is inwardly directed. We take flight inwardly by taking a leave of absence from thought and from the mind. Again, doesn't predispose this terribly well to being available as students to learning and or to being available to doing our jobs as the big people as the grown-ups on the scene. Freeze is another F and that is from the survival instinct to duck the radar and go unnoticed. So you really are frozen. You can't decision-make. You cannot problem-solve. You cannot move forward. Sometimes you cannot move. You become frozen in time. And slack is you want to get back to your people which again is a survival instinct. The job of the baby monkey in the jungle when it hears some wrestling in the underbrush is to get back to mommy or daddy monkey in order to survive. So we have an instinct to find our people. And you can see probably in your students, sometimes that might show up as separation anxiety where they are really challenged or struggled to leave their close people, usually the parents and their family to come to school. They might be challenged to leave you to go out into the classroom or out into the playground or away from an adult that feels like a safe, secure base to them. They want to stay close because they're having a hard time feeling settled and sorted. And so this is, I mean, this is just a very quick look at some of the things that have been playing out in terms of how our minds and our brains and our bodies are responding to the chronicity of stress that everybody has been feeling over the last couple of years. And notably, there are not a lot of child psychologists around. We are a rare breed. And it turns out that the problem solving around the mental health challenges presenting in our children is something that we are going to need to navigate on the front lines. I once sat down and did the math to figure out how many hours a child spends in the presence of their teachers from kindergarten three to grade 12. And it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 19,000 hours. I also happen to know from my undergraduate days in the biopsychology lab that it takes about 3000 hours for neural connections to be solidified and formed into networks and linked at least in the simplicity of the Petrie dish. What I'd like for you to know and feel empowered by and inspired by is that 19,000 hours you may feel like the work that you were doing sometimes is just a drop in the bucket. But I got to tell you as somebody who talks with your students, as somebody who sat in the room with some of your students who are actually alive today because of one sentence that a teacher said to them in grade four, the work that you were doing matters. And in those 19,000 hours, even if you only have a student for a fraction of that time, you can indeed make a world of change. You can be the person who sets that growth trajectory onto a new path and allows that child to be reconnected to the things that will enable them to become the biggest best version of self. How are we going to do all of that? Well, we are going to focus on the magic of connection. You see, we're a social species and what that means is that in order to be our best selves, we need to be in relationship. We need to be all about contact and closeness and making that meaningful and making it count, especially when the going gets tough. In fact, science shows us that the attachment system, if I can simplify it to that, which is that sort of network of neurons in the brain that becomes activated at certain times will activate in one of three circumstances when you are emotionally upset, physically hurt or ill. And so you can see why so much of our systems have been yearning towards wanting to be more connected both on a broader systemic level and also as individual humans because we all have attachment systems that have been firing on repeat within our brains and our brains know to seek that contact and closeness in order to find us feeling more settled and more grounded. And so if we have a child and we want to grow them up in the manner that nature intended, we need to be focused on certain parts of the brain that are going to wire up to allow that kind of emotional self-regulation to manifest in the heart of that brain. To do that, we have to be able to hold the child's hearts in our hands and to do that, the child must trust us. And so education, 19,000 hours at this point in our history necessarily involves figuring out ways to feel that connectedness with ourselves, with our students, with our communities, with our colleagues so that the child can trust us to lean in that we will be the providers of that contact, of that closeness, that we will make it safe for them to trust us to put their hearts in our hands. And when they do that, it's as though we are granted this immeasurable access to the developing brain. And over the longer term, the research shows us time and time again that when kids have repeated experiences of being emotionally regulated in their external environments by adults who care for them, that this is the one distinguishing factor that sets them apart from other people in terms of how they will then carry on in life and the different things that they will be able to accomplish and eventually be able to contribute back to their communities. Now, the obvious question is, okay, awesome, Vanessa. So you get to be connected to kids, you invite them to trust you with their hearts and workshops over. People often then have the question, okay, that's all well and good. How do we do that? And I would really love to tell you at this point in my career 20 years in, and I'm 18 years in, child raising of my own. I have literally worked with thousands of clients. I'd love to be able to say, hey guys, check it because I've come up with a list, this is how you do it and it's foolproof, it's a sure thing and this is the way through. I don't have a list. And the issue is that when we ask, what do we do to make all of that happen? We're asking the wrong question because we aren't as it turns out human doings. We are human beings and even with very, very young children, when somebody like me tries to script a way forward for people like you, kids who are so tuned in energetically to whether or not we actually know what we're doing and whether or not we've actually got it going on, they're gonna just like sniff the air around you and be like, ha, I know you went and talked to that psychologist lady and I know that she gave you this list of things and I know you're not for real, so now I don't trust you. So we can't be scripted in the way that we flow into this. Instead, we have to actually have it within us. And what do I mean by that? Well, I've developed this three-part mantra in order to keep you focused on this. The idea is that you see what's going on with a student, with yourself, with a colleague, with a family member, whatever it is. You see it, it'll take you half a second. Many of us are tempted to stop right at that point. We see it, it's a problem, we put a bandaid on it, we wanna squash it, whatever it is. We try to just deal with it at the surface level, at the level of the facade. But I wanna invite you to go behind that facade. I wanna invite you to go into the inner workings of self, go into the inner workings of student, go into the inner workings of other. And when you can compassionately, from a space inside your being, do you hear the word? When you can compassionately from a space inside your being, be connected to the being of another, you no longer need me to tell you what to do. You see the doing, the actionable thing is going to flow from the being. And I so many times I'm just pumping my fist in the air, telling you to keep the faith that you really will land. If you can align the inner parts of self, the inner world of self with the essence of what it is to be human for self and for other, then that being that you will create within you will be the wise leader of all of the actionable doing that you can undertake in order to make a difference in the world of a child or anybody else for that matter. So see it, then feel it, then be it. Now allow me just to take a moment to breathe some life into that. I wanna do that by first off, having you really get that you're the answer. You see children, human children, and actually a lot of other species as well, come into the world wired up knowing that they've gotta find you. Their job is to find the big people because without the big people, life as they know it is untenable. And so they're constantly seeking you out. And sometimes the ways that they seek you out do not inspire really compassionate responses. And so be aware that there's no such thing in kids as attention seeking, it's only attachment seeking, all behaviors, communication, all they want is some kind of a connection so that they can make sense of their inner world, make sense of their outer world and figure out a pathway forward. When kids are connected, they will be regulated. That's just how we work as human beings because our most essential need, more important than well, okay, as important as there is the need for connection. Babies, you can feed them, water them, close them. If you do not love them, they will die. They need connection as a basic part of human survival. And so when we are in connection, it's like the antidote to stress. It's the antidote to the dysregulated brain. It's how the dysregulated brain, the emotionally activated brain is settled down. When the child or any of us are in connection, we will be regulated. When the child is facing disconnection, they will feel dysregulated. I was speaking recently with a friend, a boy that's on the same sports team as my son's school sports team. And I happened to be able to give him a ride home after a game and I got near full in that car ride as you often do when you have teenagers and heard that this boy had been in a lot of trouble at school and one of the premises, one of the suggestions that had come forward in terms of allowing him to remain at school as he was on the cusp of being no longer able to attend because of some of his behaviors was that he joined a team sport. So this was the whole long explanation for why he was now playing on this particular team with my son and I thought to myself how incredibly wise of that administrator to realize how desperate this child was in seeking connection and to plunk him down in the midst of this team dynamic with coaches as mentors, you know, other lighthouses that can be in this child's life and a team around him who will sort of uphold the behavioral code of the group. Now this child is in connection and much more likely to feel that sense of emotional regulation as a result because when we are connected, our alarm systems, the emotional parts of us that can become activated are brought to rest and that is why human connection as we come into this next chapter of our existence is the ultimate solution. It will affect you and your students neurologically. It'll affect you and your students biologically. It will affect you and your students emotionally. It'll affect you and your students soulfully. Human connection from a bird's eye view from a wide-angled lens, this is where it is at. And as I looked forward through the plan of the speakers that are coming on today and tomorrow I can see how this is woven through, basically everything that you will be talking about. So let's talk about, let's breathe a little life into how you might put that into play. Some on-the-ground ideas. I don't wanna feed you things to do because I really want you to sit with the being of this and be thus inspired to fiercely step in in whatever manner makes sense for self and for others. But I do wanna give you a little bit of a sense of the essence of how this might play out. So what does it look like for kids? Well, one of the things is you gotta just know. Even if you have no idea what it is that's happening, you just know. You know, it has occurred to me over the years as I've sat in room with some of my clients. And yes, I have a doctoral degree and I went to school and I learned all the things that one's meant to learn in order to become a psychologist. Having said that, the number one thing that gets me buying from the kids and the parents that I work with is the ability to just know, even when I have no idea. I know we'll find a way through. I know that there is an answer. Maybe I don't know exactly what the answer is, but I know that I'm capable of sourcing it. I know that everything is figure-outable, just as this is figure-outable. And so I got you and I got this and I got us and we're gonna find our way through. It's having that sort of sense of what I often refer to as swagger, like you've got it going on. And you don't need to know exactly the pathway through as my beautiful friend, Ranbir poor, often says you gotta faith it till you make it, not fake it, but faith it until you make it. So just know, be okay with upset. We don't need to sanitize this. We don't need to make it all be shiny and fine. We actually need to sink into it and be okay with the upset, knowing that wherever there has been challenged, there will be opportunity for growth. And our job is to create a big invitation for all of that to flow. And we do that by allowing that expression of upset to land in the eyes, ears, mind, heart of a caring big person that can hold space and that can provide that connected touch point. The activated mind, the alarmed mind, the dysregulated mind doesn't really love change, doesn't really love disruption, doesn't really love surprises, even happy surprises. And so this is a time to cultivate consistency where kids just know how it's all gonna go, where you have rituals because the key thing with rituals and traditions alongside that, they create a sense of belonging for all of us. And so if we can just plot along for a little while, make it all feel kind of very routine and build into the routines, some rituals and some traditions. This is how we say hello. This is how we come in in the morning. This is how we leave at the end of the day. This is how we greet each other in the hallway. We have ways of belonging together. That's cultivating that relationship. That is shining a light on one of the most primal forms of attachment, which is belonging and loyalty. And so knowing that that's important, we can actually work with that. And as an emergency toolkit, I want for you to know, you don't gotta fix anything. You do not have to have solutions. You do not need to know the way through. Your most important thing in a moment when it's all getting very loud and intense is to listen. And listening means you don't make it right. You don't make it wrong. Listening means you have that student or other person feel very heard. I see you, I get it, I understand and we're going to move in this direction. And as you find ways to move, make sure that you are always shining a light on hope, on treasure and moving at the speed of trust. Now finally, I want you to know that it's not just the kids that need championing right now. We have to, as grownups, in order to grow kids up, we've got to grow ourselves up. So it's important for us to be mindful of the idea that we must regulate ourselves also. To do that, you've got a few things that you can come through on for you as well. I want to encourage you to ride the waves of your emotions. If you don't let yourself hit the bottom of those feelings and we so often want to anesthetize out of the big feelings, if you don't allow yourself to hit the bottom of those feelings, then you never get the bounce back. You never get to ride the full wave back to feeling settled and sorted and joyful and happy and hopeful again. It's like a ball that falls to the earth that must hit the ground to compress and then bounce back. So ride the wave. There's no such thing as a bad feeling. All feelings are legitimate and need to be felt all the way. I have this beautiful colleague, Teacher Tom, is his name and he talks about how the cry needs to be cried all the way. So you're going to ride the wave. You're going to remember to breathe. The breath is everything, especially in moments when we're feeling really undone. Just sit and take five deep breaths and see how it counteracts the responsiveness of your sympathetic nervous system. Know that you're going to drop the ball and that's okay. You're going to get yell-y-shouty or you're not going to be super compassionate sometimes with self or with others. And so you're just going to have a lot of grace for yourself in this knowing it's been a tough ride. You're going to watch your thoughts and challenge yourself. I always say, be like a third eye, hanging out over your own mind. Does that thought work for me or against me? And if it's not working for me, then can you come up with a new thought, a new story? Understand that whatever lenses you are looking through are coloring your experience right now. Perception is everything. Listen guys, all of this is about how our minds are processing it. So perception is at the heart of everything and when you change the way you look at things, the things that you are looking at also will change. So challenge yourself in that direction. One of my favorite things to suggest when the going gets rough is get outside. Number one, it's free. Number two, it's accessible to everybody. And finally, we know from the science that it has an extraordinary impact on mental health and wellbeing as does physical exercise. Also free 99 and we know from the research one of the most potent interventions when it comes to anxiety, 30 minutes of elevated heart rate activity per day and then find your connections because at the end of the day, connection is indeed everything. And it is the way that we will come out the other side, not just having survived but actually thriving. Maria, I would love for you to join me and let me know what's been going on in the chat. And if we've got any questions coming in and what it is that some people sign. Thanks so much, Vanessa. I'm really energized way to start the day, that's for sure. And one of the things that struck me is you're totally right about the weaving of, and people in chat by the way are saying thank you. The weaving of the next two days, how we're going to double click on number of the things that you said. And somebody said couldn't stop taking notes. So they were taking notes and not writing questions. So you can continue to post your questions now because you can see that my attention deficit is just enough that I can read your questions and talk to Vanessa at the same time. So please keep adding them now. Yeah, you know what? It's interesting. One of the first questions that came in is my questions. Before I get there, I wanted to say that one of the things that we are going to be double clicking on over the next two days is this question about the adult in the room. And Lisa, Bayless, who many of you know will be talking about the difference between empathy and compassion, which you touched on. And also Gabber Maté will be here to do the Gabber thing and to talk to us more about what's happening for us and how we can best support ourselves to be what we can be, to help children be the best they can be, as you said. Because that is one thing that jumped out at me immediately and it is the one that's coming up in questions and that is this be a safe space to give that kind of advice to teachers. And I know you met all the adults who were watching but let's stick with teachers for a minute because they are in the room all of the time. They are absorbing the stress contagions and the happy contagions and they are not therapists, they are not clinicians. So the real question is if you could give some examples from what you've seen of what is the best way that a teacher that somebody can support teachers or teachers can support themselves in that role. Yeah, and that's such a brilliant, I love that idea of contagion because as much as we think often about energy being kind of this, you know, airy-fairy, psychobabbly kind of thing, if you've ever walked into a room where two people are at odds with one another, you will know that energy is real because you feel it in the air. So to be a teacher on the front lines, I mean to be in schools period right now where all of this is hanging heavy in the air and you breathe in energetically that air day in and day out, that's a big thing for us to be talking about. One of the things that my mind immediately goes to is the concept of boundaries in a different form than what we often think about the mass. And the idea that I can be available to holding space and still have a closed boundary. Many of us don't have closed boundaries. We have these very sort of open boundaries where we feel what another feels as opposed to witness what another feels. And I know when I was a brand new therapist working alongside child protection in the provinces child and youth mental health program, I really had to figure out quite quickly how to have that boundary feel a little bit more closed in order to be able to show up for my clients to not be at the effect of their emotions. And so one of the ways that I think it's helpful to kind of figure out how to get that boundary to remain closed is to understand that with a focus always on hopefulness and a focus on where there is challenge, there can be growth. We think about what's happening for a child in this moment as something that's happening for them, not to them. So that the upset, the anger, the sadness, the aggression, whatever it is that's coming out that you're inviting into the space, that that is received with a wise eye, a wise heart that knows that like alchemy is about to go down, that this child is in the process of growth. That's why that's all playing out that way. And when you can keep the faith that that's what's happening, then that's coming up in you as a result of the emotions of others around you gets to be settled because you're like, oh yeah, I know where this is going. I get to be the wise one that shines light on the fact that this is four and not two. And we can actually use this in a transformative way to help this child land more solidly or whoever it is. So that requires some self-awareness on the part of some, a lot of self-awareness and not only intellectual self-awareness but emotional self-awareness on the part of the educator. And that's one thing. And one of the things I thought about when you were talking is that myself, I use the hand model myself. So when I, and I'm able now to say to myself, I'm flipping my lid right now and to understand that whatever is going to come out of my mouth or out of my heart is not my best self. It's the part of my brain that's protecting me from that dragon, as you said. So I would really encourage educators and you probably do the same thing, Vanessa, to do a version of that where it's actually, the reason the model's so helpful is because as soon as I feel that ire, that kind of that, I can't see so clearly, I can't hear so clearly and things are bubbling up, I immediately just think about that as being not the best time to say anything. Do you use the model yourself? Yeah, I have this vision of myself that I think about similarly when I feel, you know, as a mother, sometimes at the clinic when things are really intense and I get like, I can feel the lid lifting. And I think about like, well, I have one cortical cell still online, I'm going to do what I call in a graceful exit stage left. Sometimes the graceful exit is a physical one where I say, would you excuse me for a minute? I just realized I need to go make a call. And then I go and I breathe and I take a moment, I might do a grounding exercise, you know, something like three, two, one, three things that you see, three things that you feel, three things that you hear, two things you see, feel here, et cetera. I'll just take a minute to come back into myself. Sometimes you don't have the option to leave. And sometimes I will say something like, you know, I really want to have this conversation. And I think this is so important for us to talk about and to understand, I can see that you're really struggling and we're not going to do that right now. I look forward to talking with you about that a little bit later today. I'm going to let you know when the time is right. And for right now, here's what the plan is. So you just buy yourself a little bit of time. To a grown-up, I'll say, you know what? I'm no longer resource to have this conversation right now. And so I do want to have it. And I really look forward to talking with you. I'm going to let you know when I'm ready and you exit stage last. The idea is to do that before you, bleh, all over somebody else, your own emotional dysregulation. Yeah, that links really to some of the, really a stupid comment that just came in where we're talking about this ability to be present for a student as though it's an individual thing only. You know, I'm an individual, I have to manage, I have to do it all. But very wisely, one of our participants suggested that there's also that option of people and the adults in this space of the school or wherever to be co-regulating each other. But I think it's probably caring for each other. And the word term that they used is a culture of care, collective care. Do you want to comment on what you've seen with that and theoretically what you think about that? Yeah, you know, I think when we think through those kinds of more systemic, like what is in the air and how are we contributing to that? A few things, in my local district, of course, I get to be a fly on the wall as a parent, but also I get to interact with a lot of different professionals in the district in terms of some of the initiatives that are ongoing. And what you see, I think, culturally is the shift that we are going towards understanding more and more how important connection is. So you're seeing that? 100%. And also the idea that we need to be the change we want to see in the world. So if we want for this to be playing out for our students, then we also have to find ways to have this playing out for ourselves and amongst ourselves. I think the concept of mental health now, compared to even five years ago is much more front and center. There's, I do see that there's a little bit of overwhelm around that idea that it feels big and it feels like a lot. And as you just said, I have the benefit of being a psychologist. I literally spent my life studying and practicing these kinds of things. And it's no small thing to be suggesting that schools take on some of that and that teachers themselves end up really being on the front lines in the same way that I would be with my clients in my office without the luxury of 13 years of post-secondary education and another 20 years in the field. And so I do think that it's big and it's overwhelming and the pendulum is swinging. There is an awakening happening. This is a wake up call time for us. Wake up call times are always uncomfortable. And we are being invited to step in and face that discomfort. And somebody said to me recently, that sounds like a lot of work. And I thought, yeah, it's a lot of work. That's true. And either way you slice it, either way you look at it, it's gonna be a lot of work. Maintaining status quo and doing nothing is a lot of work because it's gonna come with a lot of follow-up and work that's required related to that. And stepping into the wake up call, also a lot of work. But I gotta tell you, the finish line, the outcomes with that looks so much different. And that kind of work is the kind of work I'm willing to sign up for. Just later in the day, you're gonna have opportunities, all of you, to connect with each other. And so there'll be a networking opportunity, for example, during the break and then during another activity that we're doing called reflecting connect. So I can see there's a lot of energy around this question and this term of collective care. I hope that you connect with each other then. And I'll also pass this on to Lisa Bayless, who, as you know, is when they be presenting tomorrow so that we can carry on with this conversation because I think it's just what I'm seeing in the chat, what I'm hearing in the world is that this really requires a lot of attention right now that not only the care of the educator but the co-care and the setting up systems where that's acknowledged in a part of the way things are done. So thank you for answering that, Vanessa. One of the other things that jumped out at me and it hasn't come up as a question but I was imagining this idea about attachment seeking instead of attention seeking. People have commented on, they really appreciate that concept. And I was imagining a preschooler first primary student and they can, yeah, I can see that. And then I imagined the teenagers, the younger adults and the teenagers and thinking about what that looks like sometimes. That attention, I should say that attachment seeking and how it looks like and it feels like sometimes to them they don't wanna connect. You're saying they need to and they want to but it doesn't look that way and it doesn't feel that way to them. So this could be a whole lecture, a whole talk but can you just speak to that? Yes, this could be like all the perfectly dyed gray hairs in my head. Well, you can see I just gave up the whole dying thing. Brilliant, brilliant. You know, adolescence is such a curious time developmentally because it's kind of like the world of opposites where they have one arm reaching forward into this world of independence and adulthood and this other arm reaching backwards in a yearning kind of way to the security and the dependence of their childhood. And their brains are really landing on kind of black and white concepts which is necessary for them in order to really sort of play with all of those heady kinds of ideas that you've gotta grapple with in order to establish who you are and what direction you're headed in the world. As part of that, their job is to step away from us at times, their job is to emerge. But remember that emergent energy is always gonna be balanced by the yearning for the contact and closeness. Just yesterday I was in the car for a couple of hours with my 15 year old son listening to death metal which I feel like earns me an award of some kind as a mother and I did that on purpose because I want, you know, I like to be interested in the things that he's interested in just for interest sake. And I asked him a question about something to do with his French group that I felt was quite innocuous and he turned the volume up. And I thought, you, like I gave you life. And I've taken time out of my schedule. Oh, your lid was flipping there Vanessa. So I recognize that I thought Vanessa this is the wrong time to have a conversation. So I just let him have the volume turned up. And then all of a sudden the volume gets turned right down. He's like, hey mom, did I tell you what happened in band class yesterday? Just no, you didn't. And so then, you know, this big story came out. So what happened to anything? What it is, is that because I didn't have a reaction there was no blame and shame. There, I knew to zip it and paste a little smile on my face and take some breaths and realize it's not my job to take this personally. It's my job to stay present as his grown-up. I could have, you know, blown the whole thing up but because there was no shame and blame. He wasn't made wrong for not wanting to discuss that thing. He was not made wrong for turning the music up. I did not, you know, tell him how rude that was or any of those other things. I just sat in it. And so he felt the invitation. Yeah. So here they're in set shift and that comes before that event. And then in that event, a practice behavior, which is do nothing. Do nothing. And in the classroom, of course, there's a whole other dynamic because that might happen in the midst of other students. And there's a stress contagion and all of that. So that's probably, I mean, that's another piece, but. So thank you for that. That's true. I have a three and a half year old granddaughter and already she started with me saying this. No, no, when I do this, it means I don't want to talk about that anymore. She's already sitting here. A comment came in that we have only about four minutes left, but just going back to this idea of collective care, a comment around collective care is also beautifully aligned with the first people's principles of learning. I wonder if it might not also help us better hold space in our ongoing work of truth and reconciliation. I love that. So this concept, I think we're gonna pick out comments in terms that are coming out of this, this collective care has really resonated with people. So even in the service told, if you're all alone always with that adolescent who's really going through time, it's a lot harder than if you're in a community of care. That's right. Yeah, so they said I recently learned of a soul-capping model for the nine healthcare workers and auto-apparatist with government grants. It's a place to reconnect with each other, co-regulate. So it's another example of this culture of care. Yeah. One of the other things that I wondered about is that not all children and youth and adults came out of the pandemic and the other things that you mentioned worse. There were some students who actually came out with it more connected to their learning, for example, and emotionally feeling better. How do you explain that? Yeah, we have seen that. We have quite a large number of children we see in the clinic and in my communication with people even out in community who are practicing, this has been, so we're calling it the K-curve because there's kids that are doing better and kids that are actually doing worse. The kids that are doing better, what seems very notable about that is that the things that would have been contributing to their stress, if you will, pre-pandemic would have been the busyness of life, feeling over-scheduled, not having enough time in contact and closeness with their special people, so not being around their family enough, not being around their parents enough, not having the beauty of sharing family meals every day and exploring hobbies and talents and activities together as a family. And so for kids for whom that was what the miss was, it actually has fed into a significant improvement and we've seen that in a lot of our clients that they are just doing so much better. That going back to basics was actually the return to kind of natural existence that those kids needed in order to have the reset and in order to just take a big old deep breath, push the pause button, let the brain reorganize but everything kind of comes to rest and the anxiety, some of the depression, a lot of the mood-based stuff has just kind of faded away. So you're right, it's not all doom and gloom. There are some children for whom that's been incredibly positive and for those kids, as we head back to whatever the new normal is, the idea is to recreate the new normal to have it be something that is more aligned with attuned to and think with the needs of that child. Well, Vanessa, this has been a really rich conversation. Such a great way to start our time together because one of the things that's happened here is I'm seeing that there's this community of care forming for our little community here right now in the chat by people supporting each other and sharing. So I hope you'll stay with us for the rest of today and hopefully tomorrow too. And just most I wanna say thank you so much to you for being here and getting us started today. Thank you so much for having me and a really big thank you to all of you who have joined for your presence out in the world for the work that it is that you are doing and for being the lightmakers that we also desperately need. Great, Karen, thanks so much. Thank you. So I've noticed too that people have continued to, you've continued to introduce yourselves with your own territorial acknowledgement. And before we go to break, I just wanted to make a very special introduction. It's my honor to introduce to you now Norman Garry-Sam who serves as a counselor for the Songhees Nation. And he is here actually to do an official territorial acknowledgement. Hello, Norman and take it away. Good morning. Sorry, I was talking when I didn't unmute. I could chill. I apologize for not doing this at the beginning, but I'm sitting here getting to listen to the rest of the discussions. It was just very motivating and resonates with me well. I'm just kind of meeting with communities and looking out for our children in schools too. I just heard some really, really valuable points in that and those questions. Just talking about being together, children needing that healthy environment to grow and in our schools, the teachers have a lot of work and doing that. And we're so busy focusing on our children and that we need to focus on ourselves a little more too. Because there's still in this day and age room for lateral violence from boards of directors' tables or any forms of leadership that shouldn't be allowed and children or other adults may not be encouraged to ever speak up against that. So especially today, I'm here in this mental health conference, there's also a march for murdered and missing Indigenous women happening in 15 minutes. And now it's just going to be heavy feelings in Victoria. And I just wanted to thank you guys for allowing me to be here this morning and to listen. Haishikasigam.