 I'm going live on YouTube. Without fail, the cat comes in whenever it's showtime. How do you know? All right, we are going live. Here we are, we're live. All right. Welcome, welcome friends. Give it a few moments for the room to fill up before we get started the evening and welcome YouTube viewers. I'm putting a link into the chat box for tonight's event. This link will have library news, library information, Meredith Esselot, our presenter tonight's information and where you can get the book. And I do see a hand raised already. There will be time for questions towards the end of the presentation. Unless you're having a tech issue, I can try to help you with that right now. Angela is here. Shall we have Angela introduce you? I like that. OK. Hi, Angela. Thank you for raising your hand, promoting you to panelists. So I will do a brief introduction and I'm going to introduce the library and then I'm going to turn it over. So welcome, everyone. Thank you for coming tonight. So happy to have you here for our summer Stride Tuesday night author series. Can you believe we've had an author every single Tuesday night? And it's not over yet because we still have two more Tuesday nights to go. So stick around. It's summertime for adults. It's not just for kids. So do your 20 hours of reading and get your iconic San Francisco Public Library tote bag with that adorable art you see there by Keilani Juanita. We want to welcome you to the unceded land of the Loni tribal people and acknowledge the many Rom-Nutrishloni tribal groups and families as the rightful stewards of the lands in which we reside in our gorgeous Bay Area. Our library is committed to uplifting the names of these nations and community members. We encourage you to learn more about first person rights and land rights and first person culture. And at the library we do that with lots and lots of reading lists and lots of great resources. And it is in that chat link that I put into the box. And now quick, I want to go quick for library news. It might seem like I have a lot, but we have reading campaigns, literary campaigns. August 24th, SF Chronicles, Total SF. Heather Knight and Peter Hartlub will be presenting the end of Golden Gate with Daniel Handler and Gary Kamaya. We have a quarterly book club with Total SF. We have a bimonthly book read that's been going for many, many years. It's called On the Same Page. We encourage all of San Francisco to read the same book. July and August has been Jacqueline Woodson read at the phone. Book Club is virtual on Monday, August 30th. And Jacqueline Woodson was just in the virtual library and her YouTube video is a time sensitive one. We'll be up for, I think, another week. And I will put that into the chat box as well. Tomorrow SF Chronicles, Mick LaSalle, who has not had a book out in 10 years. He's the film critic at SF Chronicle. And yeah, we're looking forward to that tomorrow. My cat is having a spaz attack when I need part of me. And then Friday, Spanish language, art day. So in Spanish, artist, colegs de robles will be doing a monoprinting demo. We think it's the best place to be. One, if you speak Spanish, all the better. But if you want to speak Spanish or you're practicing your Spanish, you should come with this program. And it's really fun. On Monday, Malacca Garib will be doing a zine. She also has a graphic novel. And so it's going to be fun. SF Neon, Terloin Museum, Cinema, and Neon. I don't know if many of you know, but the SF Public Library has a jail and reentry services department. We serve the prisons in San Francisco in person. And we also do a host of things with folks who are experiencing reentry into San Francisco and working on jobs, working on resumes, all sorts of stuff. So in partnership with jars, we have the amazing Radesa Jones, who uses art and social transformation regarding women in prison. So please come check that out. And our final Tuesday author series will be a presentation from photographer John Lander. So that should be really fun and gorgeous and relaxing. So come on out. And then after summer, we have Viva Latinx Heritage Month. So much happening. So please come on through. And the on the same page for September and October will be the undocumented Americans. And this will have a author talk with both the author in combo with Jonathan Blitzer. All right. And now, without further ado, I am going to turn it over to our speaker tonight, Meredith Esselot and Angela Engel, who will introduce Meredith. All right. And Q&A will be at the end. Use your Q&A function. Thank you all again. Hi, everyone. Well, thank you so much to the San Francisco Public Library for having us tonight. I'm really excited to dive in to this conversation, especially I live just in Oakland, so across the bridge. But as a mom of three, Meredith, this is an absolute delight. I'm Angela Engel. I am the publisher at the Collective Book Studio. We are an independent women-owned press here in Oakland. And it's just been Meredith came with this idea as with her extensive knowledge as first a teacher and now a principal there in San Francisco and really wanted to touch parents in a more friendly way and wrote the book, The Overly Honest Teacher, which is that kind of parenting advice from a classroom. And I think in the time of Zoom school and Zoom fatigue, so I really want to thank everyone for being here because Meredith really pivoted and to talk about that tonight, to talk about sort of the key elements of this book that kind of grapple with some of the things that we continually have, whether it is still to get your school supplies and your binder and your calculator. I think for you to give that advice tonight in this book and really make it and kind of pick it from academia and from your research and really being it to the everyday person is what I find so special about, both who you are and how you write. So I'm going to turn it over to you and I'm excited. I will be watching the chat tonight. So if something really intrigues everybody on this call that you want to ask, really exciting or not so exciting, I always say any question is open, please. I will monitor them so that Meredith can kind of run through her slides. And then finally tonight from my press we are going to be raffling off a physical copy of The Overly Honest Teacher, as well as a digital addition that can be used for any mobile device. So whether you have a Kindle or a Moby or an Apple Reader, we will provide that for you as well as one of our lovely tote bags. I always say, do what you love and love what you do. So Meredith, I'm going to turn it over to you. Awesome, Angela, thank you so, so much. Thank you to the San Francisco Public Library for having me tonight. I am thrilled to be here with all of you. My name is Meredith Esalat. I am the author, as Angela said, of The Overly Honest Teacher. I am also the head of school at Mission Dolores Academy here in San Francisco. And I am really, really excited to have the opportunity tonight to talk with all of you about a topic that, as Angela said, is not only near and dear to my heart as an educator, but to those of you who are parents and guardians, maybe your friends and supporters of parents and guardians in your lives and have seen especially over the last 18 months what we all have gone through in terms of this evolution of how we approach education, how we make learning accessible to our students, no matter where they are, no matter where they're learning from. And as much as I think we all thought we were at the end of this journey, it seems like we're still in it and that's okay. We're going to still prevail. We've done hard things. We're going to continue to do hard things. And my goal tonight is that we really continue to establish the partnership and the teamwork and the collaboration that was the precipice for my desire to write the overly honest teacher originally to really bridge that gap that exists oftentimes between teachers and parents and guardians. We're all on the same team. We're all working towards the same goals. And I think this overlining to the last 18 months really is that there has been that renewed collaboration between our two camps. So tonight what we're going to be talking about, I'm going to share my screen with all of you and we are going to be looking at, here we go. We are going to be looking at how to implement classroom standards into your at home learning environment. How do you make learning not only something that continues on long after the pandemic into your home environment, but how do you take tried and true methods of holding students accountable, maintaining consistency, instilling in them autonomy and independence? How do you continue to build that out long after COVID and distance learning is behind us? Because one day it will be, I promise. So here we go. Some things tonight that we are going to focus on. The first is going to be consistency. The next will be accountability. The third will focus and talk about collaboration. And then finally we'll end with something that I always started the school year off for my middle school students. Before I was head of school, I taught middle school, primarily seventh and eighth grades for the better part of a decade. And I always kicked off the year talking about the definition of autonomy because my goal as a teacher, and I know for all of you who are parents and guardians or friends of students is to help them develop that independence, that self-reliance, their ability to be resilient. And so we'll end tonight talking about something that I always would start the year off with, which is autonomy. So let's jump right into consistency. Consistency oftentimes I think gets a bit of a negative connotation, much like the word consequence, which I talk a lot about in my book. But consistency really is something that our kids rely upon. It really helps them to feel that sense of structure, of routine, and of boundaries. Now, oftentimes consistency equals rules in their minds. And if you have a kid, you know that they wanna push against those rules. They wanna push against those boundaries. But we have to give them something to push against. I oftentimes will use the analogy if a student says to me like, I don't like that rule, or no, I wanna do what I want. You know, I'll sit down and talk to them about, okay, well let's look at what would a world look like if we had no traffic lights? If we didn't have the consistency and the structure of a stoplight. What if you went to go do microwave popcorn one night when you're watching a movie and there's no instructions? You really don't want it burned and you really don't want all those uncooked kernels. So we have to have structure and helping your students understand the importance of that structure and the importance of being consistent really will help them in the long run to be able to appreciate and structure their lives around those boundaries in the long term. So tonight I wanna talk first about what does consistency look like in the school environment? Well, at school consistency for us looks like a daily schedule of classes. Students come to rely upon the fact that they're gonna have 90 minutes of math and it's gonna be followed by maybe 90 minutes of language arts. They know when lunch is gonna be, they know when recess is. We don't just all of a sudden willy-nilly spend five hours of math one day. That's gonna be a disaster. They come to rely upon the schedule, they know how to predict their day and they know then how to organize their environment. That meal times as I mentioned where they know that their brains and bodies are gonna be fueled. We're gonna talk a lot about meals during the course of this evening because it's something that I really hit upon in my book. It's something that is so important to me as an academic leader. Our kids need to start their day with breakfast. Something simple. They need to have something for lunch that is gonna fuel them for the rest of the day. It is just devastating as a teacher when we watch a student crash and burn come 1.30, two o'clock in the afternoon or have a catastrophic meltdown around 9.45 because their bodies are running on empty. So we punctuate their days with that throughout the school week. Classroom tasks and responsibilities. Students come to rely upon the fact that they are members of an academic community. We give them tasks. Maybe they hold the door open. Maybe they turn the lights off when they're the last ones out of the classroom. Maybe they bring in the athletic supplies after recess. They have these responsibilities. It gives them that structure of where their place is in the classroom. And then we have transitions that are deliberate. Oftentimes, transition times will fluctuate a bit. Maybe an assembly gets delayed and we have to make a little bit more time or a little less time. But we generally will give our students an understanding of, hey, you've got five more minutes. I need you to start to put away your art supplies. I need you to begin to get yourselves ready for math class. And if you wanna get a drink of water now is the time. All of these things can be implemented into your at-home environment. Because having a schedule and a routine at home mimics the boundaries of school and it helps students to feel more grounded and focused. It is so crucial. Something that I really feel that I've built my career on as a teacher is trying to create a learning environment that is cohesive for students. One that exists at school and it exists at home and then it exists back at school again. So we create this arc and students come to realize that the expectations that they are demanded of from eight to three at school are the same ones they're gonna find when they return home to the parents and guardians. So at-home, how can you implement consistency? Well, in the morning, you can set alarm clocks, have your students set their alarms, but also limit the number of snoozes because we all know that if we hit that snooze button one too many times, it's going to send our morning routine into an absolute tumult of chaos. So setting those limits and establishing them for the whole household. Our students want us to be consistent with our expectations that we hold ourselves to just as much as we hold them to. I'm currently onboarding my new team of teachers for the new academic year. And one of the things we talked about was how much our students dislike hypocrisy and how that can be so detrimental to our relationships and rapport with them. So establishing that at home is key. Breakfast expectations, modeling for them that you're gonna make time to eat so that they will be able to do the same. Hygiene routines, remember we got to brush our teeth and we got to comb our hair before we walk out the door. And knowing the time to leave the house so that we can arrive at school without panic or frenzy or God forbid getting one of those late flips or tardies. After school and kids come home, scheduling, time for homework, scheduling, time for free time, scheduling time for family time. I've heard feedback from not only friends of mine who have kids of their own, pardon me, but also fellow colleagues. The pandemic really gave us all a glimpse into the daily lives of those other members of our household. And so really how can we continue that long after where you stay engaged, you stay capped in to what's going on in your child's life and scheduling that on the calendar, it may sound a little bit overt and a little bit contrived, but it works. Making time for dinner, again, punctuating the day with those meals, setting a time for powering down devices. If it means you have to turn off the wifi for the whole house, do it because it is so essential that our students are getting that brain break that only true sleep can provide. And even taking their cell phones away so they truly get that downtime from electronics is really, really important. It's painful at first, but I promise it's well worth it. All right, expectations need to be outlined and they need to be adhered to. You've got to be consistent in terms of being consistent. You have to hold yourself to the expectation that sometimes you might feel like the heavy and that's not always a fun position to be in, but I guarantee you it is the best thing that you can do by your child. You can develop a contract. We have contracts in school all the time. If something students are gonna encounter late into their lives, they're gonna have to sign a rental agreement one day, they're gonna have to sign a contract for a job that they get. So developing contracts around screen time, language that they use, chores and responsibilities, homework routines, and a family commitment to eat breakfast every day. Set those with goals, set those with positive reinforcements at the end. Nothing wrong with an intrinsic reward or an extrinsic reward of maybe a pizza dinner at the end of the week if everybody adheres to the goals that were set up in that contract. No one wants to be tethered to routine but consistently gives kids, consistency gives kids a solid understanding of rules and parameters, how life works. Boundaries help students develop an appreciation for their place and space in the world. And consistency is essential in reinforcing those universal expectations that they are going to have to live by long after they are as certainly outside of my classroom and definitely once they're living on their own outside of your home environment as well. It also evens a scale when it comes to sibling rivalry. It works in the classroom. Kids want things to be fair. If you find that you have more than one child living in your home, consistency shows that everybody is doing the same thing. Things are equal, things are fair, and that definitely helps to dispel some of the animosity that can exist between sibling rivalry. So along with consistency is accountability. Holding our students accountable. And I go on in the slides to talk about, let's talk about accountability and let's talk about why it is so essential that we hold our students to a set of standards, a set of expectations so that we can help them achieve a set of directives or outcomes that is going to enable them for long-term success. Holding kids accountable. I really wanna stress this over and over again. Holding kids accountable does not mean that you are the mean parent or guardian. It doesn't mean that I am the mean teacher or that I somehow have it out for my students. What it means is that you are holding them to a standard of excellence when it comes to participating in the human experience. Life is going to hold them accountable. We need to give them the tools to be able to meet that level of accountability. Accountability also helps develop responsibility muscles in our students. They're accountable for themselves, their words, their actions, their relationships with others, and they're accountable for how they contribute to their community, their household, their neighborhood, their city, and their nation. We need their contributions to the well-being of this country. So at school, accountability is kind of the baseline foundation of how a school community exists and how we are able to thrive with our students learning. Due dates for homework assignments. That's just a given. There has to be a point at which your student turns in their work on time, that there are deadlines in life. And when there's not, there is that result or that consequence. In my book, I often talk about how consequence has been deemed this kind of dirty word. And in reality, what consequence is doing is showing our students that for every action, there is a reaction. And I use it in a positive way. I tell my students all the time, you have the consequence of having a birthday is that you get to have cake and open presents and people celebrate the day that you were born. The consequence of saying something really negative or snarky to your classmate is that you are gonna have to make up for that action. And so in the case of due dates for homework assignments, maybe taking time out of recess or activities to complete that homework is essential. Additionally, we are going to talk next about, here we go. Just one second, my screen is being a bit wonky. Taking time out of recess to complete activities. And then next up, we're gonna talk about time limits on classroom, work and projects. It's the same as above. Oftentimes when I talked back before about the transitions that we have that are deliberate, the same thing goes for classroom, work and projects. We've got 10 more minutes to finish this assignment. I've gotta have it done by the end of the day. If not, you're gonna have to stay in during recess or maybe during PE so that we can get this work done for you. Consequences for the misuse of language and put downs. If there's one thing you take away to put in your toolbox tonight, I hope it is this because this was a mainstay of my classroom. It is still a mainstay of my administrative office. Anytime a student said something negative about themselves, a person will put down, you know, I'm so dumb or oh my gosh, I hate my hair or they said something negative about a classmate, they had to write 25 positive adjectives. It's a great way to build vocabulary. It's a great way to get them familiar with using a thesaurus. I would highly recommend you can run to Target and get one for I think around $5. Kick it old school, have them sit down and pour through that thesaurus and find 25 positive adjectives. They have to sign it, they have to date it and they have to give it to the person or they have to tack it up on the refrigerator or their bathroom mirror and remind themselves of those positive thoughts that they have for them. But again, holding them accountable to the words that they use towards themselves and others. Restorative practice when it comes to community being broken at school, oftentimes this looks like where they will contribute back to community by doing yard cleanup or working with younger students or writing letters of apology. Just ways that they can make reparations for breaking trust or breaking community within their classroom environment. And again, this is definitely something that can be done within the at-home environment too. So at home, you need to hold everyone accountable for their chores and responsibilities contributing to the household community. Making sure that chores are evenly distributed and they aren't picked up by parents and guardians. Classic example, the kids want a dog, parents get them the dog with the understanding that the kids are gonna take care of the dog but a month in, the parents are walking the dog, the parents are feeding the dog, the parents are cleaning up after the dog. Students need to start to assert that independence and that responsibility. So hold them accountable to it. Homework must be done prior to gaming, to Netflix, to social media, collecting cell phones at the start of homework time. We do it at school, grades three through eight have to put their cell phones into a box and deposit them at the front office and they get them at the end of the day so that they truly can be tapped into what they need to do during the course of the school day, tapped into their academics. Same thing can go for home. You know what, you will definitely get your phone back as soon as you complete that math assignment that we both know you have to get done. You can definitely watch that show on Netflix that you've been dying to after we go through those science flashcards for your quiz tomorrow. Consequences again, like I told you for that misuse of language, those 25 positive adjectives it still is my go-to. And restorative practice at home when it comes to community being broken, letters of apology, maybe having your child or your adolescent be responsible for making dinner one night or being responsible for making a piece of the dinner depending on their age. But having them give back to the family environment and bringing everybody on the same page around community is so, so important. Next, we're gonna talk about collaboration. And I think that the two things that we've talked about so far in terms of accountability and in terms of consistency they both are subsets of collaboration. You really are having to collaborate with your children as counterparts in terms of creating that team dynamic that we are all going to be working together. So what does collaboration look like when we are at school? Or rather, let's first look at the three types of collaboration that we're gonna talk about tonight. Collaboration with your child, with your team, with your adolescent, with your college age student when your child becomes an adult. Collaboration with their teachers, so, so important, so crucial to their ongoing academic development. And collaboration with fellow parents and guardians. These can be parents and guardians in your children's classes. It can be parents and guardians in your larger, greater school community. And it can be even the parents and guardians in your social circles outside of school. How can you continue to develop and model for your students that sense of collaboration? So, collaboration form one. You must be your student's parent first, which we talked about a little bit before. Holding them accountable does not make you the mean parent, but being a parent means that you are parent first and friend later. And I guarantee you, I promise, that if you are the parent first throughout those formative years of their development, you will be able to develop and evolve into a friendship in the long term. But they have to know that you are there to hold them accountable, to give them structure, to show them the path that you know they're capable or help them have that dialogue and communication around the path that they want to set out on. You've got to be the parent first. You've got to be the heavy. Sometimes you have to draw the line. You can't always say yes and give in to whatever they want. They are going to always want a pony and chocolate cake. You've got to be able to say no, but you've got to have vegetables and say we're going to walk to school. It means by saying no, you're establishing for them in them the resolve to be able to overcome obstacles, to rise above failures and losses, to realize that they aren't always going to be able to do what they want when they want. I touch on this in a chapter of my book where I focus on how we have over time developed a culture where everyone is under the assumption that they are getting the A, that they are going to come in first place. And the reality unfortunately is that students are going to experience loss, but that is just how life works. And if we do not give them the tools and the resources to be able to be resilient, to reflect on what went wrong and how they can do better the next time, we're going to set them up for failure. We have to equip them with their ability to be able to overcome obstacles. And that saying no does just that. It gives them the chance to get creative and to think of alternative ways to accomplish goals. And that you established teamwork, that letting your children know that you are their champion and their ultimate cheerleader, but you also give them those coping tools to rebound, that you are always going to be in their corner rooting for them. But that doesn't mean that you can necessarily mow in front of them that lawn mower parenting style of just making life a smooth and bumpless road as much as we want that to happen, they've got to have those hurdles to refine their ability to continue to be successful long-term. And to know how great it feels to succeed in those moments when they may come in second or third place, when they may not get the A plus that despite their heart's desire still doesn't come to be. You have to help and not hinder their development. And by that I mean, you can't do their work for them. Please, please, please. Teachers do have a sixth sense where we can tell when a paper has been written or when an assignment or when a poster board has been done by a parent or guardian versus when it is done by the tenacity of their students. Help them work with them, but build up their resilience where they take the bull by the horns and they do that science fair poster on their own. They make their own student council presidential election posters. They write their own essay. Maybe you go back through it with them, talk a little bit about some word choice, but you don't kick them off the chair and sit down at the laptop and make those changes for them. You help them brainstorm for their essay versus writing it. You go for a walk and you quiz them on vocabulary words or flashcards. You make dinner together and have them add up all of the fractional measurements that you're using in that family recipe. And remember, if they come home with a bad grade, do not chastise them. Do not make them feel worse than they likely already do. If they don't feel badly, then that's a good question as well of why? Why does this not bother you? But in general, have the conversation of why did this happen? Let's reflect on how much time did you really spend on studying for this? How much time did we really spend on doing research together for this research report? Don't diminish their responsibility in their academic journey. It is so important that they are the authors of their own educational destinies. Collaboration form two, that is with teachers. That again is the crux of why I wrote the overly honest teacher because teachers want to work with you parents and guardians, we do not want to work against you. We did not get into the trenches of coming into the classroom day in and day out to be your adversaries. We want to be your allies. Every conversation that we have together should come from the foundation that parents and teachers both want the best for the kids in their care. Our students, your children, your team. But I think the big question that leaves so many of us scratching our heads is how do we establish that partnership? Especially if maybe we got off on the wrong foot to begin with and we're not quite sure how do we backpedal and get back to that place of teamwork and camaraderie? So first you have to establish rapport with your child's teacher before the school year starts, if possible, or as soon as the school year opens. And I want to say that teachers, we have to take that on us upon ourselves too, to send the email, to make the phone call, to set up the coffee and to get to know you as parents and guardians, your goal for your kids and for us to have the opportunity to share our goals and desires with you as well for the year ahead. Enter into every conversation with the goal of understanding, especially if it is around a bad grade or a consequence that maybe you felt a sense of disagreement with. Let's not place blame, but instead establish a tenor of teamwork. And by that I mean, let's talk about what happens. Let's talk about how we can work to resolve it and let's talk about what goals we can set together to be revisited in a week, a month or this quarter. Oftentimes these conversations come around where a student is struggling. Maybe they're struggling with math, maybe they are struggling with language arts. So let's set some goals and some benchmarks. Teachers have in place the scaffolding to support your students and they have ways that you can enable that same scaffolding in your at home environment. Bring your students to meetings whenever possible. I really encourage you to do this with kids as young as second grade. To increase their autonomy, which we're gonna talk about in a minute. It is so, so important that they are part of these conversations when it comes to developing their voice rather as the owners of their academic narrative. I'll tell a little bit of a self-deprecating story, but when I was a student, I came home with a report card and I had a C minus or a D in computer class. My parents asked me why, like what happened? And I told them I had no idea that I had done great all quarter. My parents went into the parent teacher conference without me, I sat outside biting my fingernails because I knew that on the other side of that classroom door, they were finding out that I had failed three or four computer quizzes that quarter and I just failed to mention them. If I had been there, I could have been part of being held accountable between the dialogue of my teacher and my parents. I could have had the moment to own my mistakes, to own my deceit, if you will, and then to set goals together with them and my teacher about how I was going to be successful in the next quarter and beyond. Believe me, I learned my lesson not to deceive around grades, but I think it's really impactful to have students be part of those conversations. Maintain open communication, whether that's by calling, by texting, by emailing, I joke, but by carrier pigeon. However it takes to get a hold of your child's teacher, do it because we want to be that tenacious in getting a hold of you. And I will say, if your cell phone number changes or your email address changes, please, please always inform your school immediately. It is so important so that we can get a hold of you when we need to be able to talk. Always be willing to take a step back when compromise doesn't appear to be in the cards. We're not always going to agree. I do make it seem like it is this very like harmonious unicorns and rainbows journey. It's not always going to be perfect and there's going to be time where we are going to continue to butt heads. But how do we deal with it when that happens? Well, we can always reschedule the meeting for another day. We can take time during that hiatus to reflect both teachers and parents and guardians on what the other person had to say, observe what their defense was for their point of view, strategize ways that you can compromise, that they can compromise, and then when you can reconvene together with cooler heads and open minds, more collaboration, more teamwork is going to be able to prevail. But never ever be afraid of putting up the pause button and saying, you know what? I don't think this is going the way that either of us intended. Could we schedule a time tomorrow, later in the week? Maybe even a phone call that evening after we both have had some time to think. Form three, developing a web of support amongst your fellow parents and guardians. In my book, I talk about the quote, little pictures have big ears. It is so easy for us to get caught up in a conversation on our cell phones and to be talking to somebody else that ends up impeding on gossip and conjecture in our own personal opinions maybe about the teachers or the other parents or guardians in your academic community. Please, please be very wary of the conversations you are giving your students visibility into because those conversations oftentimes end up coming out on the playground the next day and then we deal with a lot of hurt feelings amongst kids in their class. So demonstrate to your child in all circumstances or as much as you can how healthy relationships both professional and personal thrive. By that I mean let's really try as teachers as parents and guardians to not make rash judgments of the parents and guardians in our class or the parents and guardians in your child's class. Let's communicate with our children with authenticity but also with a filter. As much as we filter photos on our phones let's filter the words that we use in front of our students. Don't communicate with your child, your thoughts, your opinions, your ideas on their friends or classmates, parents and guardians. Find ways to be able to deal with those and resolve those feelings outside of bringing your children into it. Be open to opportunities to collaborate with parents and guardians in your class but also with students in other grades throughout the school. How can you support both the wellbeing of teachers and all the students in the class and you can accomplish that by working with parents in your class and parents in the greater community. It helps to increase your circle, it helps to increase your involvement on a holistic level in your academic environment. Additionally, you know, identify your own unique talents and abilities that can better your child's learning environment and volunteer to help, ideally interacting with a variety of parents but ideally also finding your unique way to contribute to the ongoing culture of the school community. Last one, autonomy. And again, like I told you this is always where I would start the year off with my students because at the end of the year come June when they walk out my classroom doors my goal was that, yes, they were going to be far more intelligent, far more communicative, far more compassionate and empathetic towards themselves and towards their classmates but also that they would be independent thinkers, that they would be independent communicators, that they would be able to advocate for their needs and the needs of others. And that's really where autonomy comes in. So autonomy equals action and by that I mean it's our job, it's our responsibility, it's our duty to instill in our students independence, resilience and self-reliance because autonomy is action when we help our students own and advocate for their unique needs and we give them permission to speak up when they are hurt, when they are sad, when they are hungry, when they're lonely, confused, struggling they could run that gamut of emotions within a singular calendar day at school or at home maybe you see it at home on this roller coaster that we all are writing. But also their ability to be allies and advocates for friends, classmates or individuals that they see who might be going through those same emotions as well. At my school, my students develop autonomy when I give them space to problem solve with minimal intervention. I show them how to solve a problem, we go through the steps together, this is very much maybe you've heard it the I do then we do and then you do approach. Okay, now I've given you the tools, we've done it together, it's your turn to take the reins and see how it goes. Giving them choice between two essay topics, something I definitely did often in my classroom, facilitating conversations between friends who are fighting but I allow them to chart their own narrative, I allow them to speak about their feelings and helping them come up with a draft of solutions that can be executed and can be then held accountable by myself between them. And finally, giving them minimal reminders, putting the ownership on them. Most classrooms will have a homework board. Most students should come to school equipped by third grade and beyond with a planner. I know it sounds old school, it is that pencil to paper tactile engagement of writing that is so, so crucial to their cognition and to their retention of information. So I would really encourage you as you're buying school supplies to have your student pick up a planner, have them start to write down their homework assignments. That serves as that reminder for them. You can check that planner with them when they get home at night, but then it's their job to be able to follow what they've written down. And then autonomy and action at home would look like having accessible snacks that can be accessed independently, having a shelf in a cabinet that's low enough to be able to be reached where students can get that food for themselves throughout the afternoon when they come home, tasking students with making their own lunch or breakfast or portions thereof. These things can be done at night so that it's not one more thing on your laundry list in the morning, but having your students take that sense of responsibility is so important. Having a central station where reminders are posted. I talk about refrigerator papers all the time. Maybe it's somewhere else in your home environment, the bathroom mirror, but putting the responsibility on your child, your adolescent to look at the list and then follow accordingly. Teaching them how to set their own alarm. If you take cell phones away at night, that's okay, buy them an analog clock. It helps them tell time. They can do the same thing with an alarm on an analog clock. It does not necessarily have to be on a cell phone, but empowering them to wake themselves up each morning so that they can face the day. Having them set out their clothes the night before, having them pack up their backpacks the night before, double checking against that student planner that they've put everything in. If they did the homework at night, let's make sure it gets to class the next day so that they get credit for the work that they did, but it will definitely help to ease up on hectic morning routines. We do it in the classroom all the time. If we have an assembly at the end of the day, we pack our students up at two o'clock versus having them race upstairs after the assembly and in this melee, getting ourselves ready for outside to dismissal. And finally, giving them choice and praising them when they make really positive decisions. Positive reinforcement when done right can be so meaningful and so impactful to your students. It does not mean that every tiny little ministerial thing that they have accomplished has to have celebrations and confetti, but we really do need to acknowledge when they are, one, following things that we have asked them to do, two, going above and beyond maybe what is their normal course of action, and three, letting them know that the little changes and the little moments of evolution that you see matters. The more that we are able to highlight those, the more that they're going to know that it does indeed mean that they are growing and that's what we want. So now I'm gonna turn it over to questions. I am not sure about the chat and what's been going on there, but maybe Angela can help me if there's any questions that you have. After the questions, I will definitely put up contact information because I hope that our conversation and our dialogue doesn't have to just be one sided with me talking tonight, but that you feel the freedom to reach out to me if you have any other questions beyond that. But Angela, can I ask if there's any questions? Sorry, pushing my buttons everyone to make sure. Actually, I have a question. So I think something that you kind of addressed which I really liked about this particular talk is sort of some of the dialogue that you hear on the playground. And as a parent, I have three children myself. One is an eighth grade, and they spend again from kindergarten all the way to eighth grade. So actually a K-8 subject, it's really interesting to hear what maybe a kindergartener would interpret over an eighth grader would interpret. So my question is actually now in this age of cell phones and electronics and all the other things. There are things also that my eighth grader is saying and that my kindergartener is hearing. And so I'm kind of curious, A, what your take is that I need to be aware of on the playground when my kindergarten may be overhearing some of the tough stuff that my eighth grader is expressing on her new, on her cell phone device. So that's a tough one, but that's my question for you, Merida. Yeah, no, and that's a great one, Angela. It comes up often. We find at school that oftentimes parents will come to us the next day after their child has come home and then like they came home and said this word and we haven't said that word in our household and we're not sure where it's coming from. The fact of the matter is with the presence of social media and just its burgeoning existence and the upsides and downsides of it, students are oftentimes going to be exposed to content and to language and to ideology that is far beyond their developmental age and really their developmental ability to be able to grasp. And so my answer to this is a couple layers. First, I really encourage everyone whose children and adolescents have social media accounts to follow your students. It does not mean that you make a big deal out of it, you don't respond to their posts, you don't comment on their pictures. If you have commentary or questions around their content or the people they're following, you take those conversations offline and you really approach those conversations in dialogue with honesty and transparency but you give them space to speak and you accept their answers and their responses. You may not always agree with it, you can definitely push back and ask some of those next level questions but our kids need to feel safe in being vulnerable. It can be really, really scary to them to broach certain subjects if they think that they are going to upset you, they're gonna get in trouble but they do really are craving communication. So first and foremost, I think just by establishing very baseline and very benign questions to begin with around social media with them, letting them know that you're gonna be following them but that you have a promise, a commitment, a contract that you are not necessarily gonna call them out in front of the digital audience I think is really, really important. In those conversations, I think it's also essential to really have family meetings around responsibility, family meetings around what are appropriate conversations that younger siblings can be brought into. In the classroom, we talk about this all the time. You know, we're gonna be doing a reading activity with your book buddies today. Maybe it's an eighth grade class and our first grade class. We need you to be really mindful of the fact that you have to change the way that you talk in terms of like your voice projections, right? You draw them in. Be really careful about the words that you're choosing to use. One, that they're not over their heads and jargon that they are never gonna understand but two, that you're really reflecting to them content that is appropriate for them. Topics that are not going to either get them all excited because they think that they've heard something that they shouldn't but also things that are gonna help them feel comfortable in having conversations with older students. And I think too, you can always look at developing a contract with your older students in goal-setting with them on how can they model for their younger siblings some really positive, healthy interactions with social media. And you can do the same with your students as well. Getting onto YouTube with them, monitoring the videos that they watch. If something comes up that seems a little bit off topic immediately broaching that subject in the moment and not brushing it over. That only leads to curiosity and then that can go down a rabbit hole. That was great, thank you. So we do have a couple of questions in the Q&A. So we're gonna answer this one from Jesse Chavez. Advice to get my kid jazzed up after this past year. Particularly after this year where it may have slacked as a parent. Which I really thank you, Jesse. That is just one thing that Meredith just talked about is vulnerability. And I think that's sort of that honesty. And so I love that this question is so honest, Meredith would you like, can you help answer this one for Jesse? Yeah, Angela, I missed the first part of the question though. Advice on? To get my, so particularly advice to get my kid or any kid jazzed up after this past year. They kind of had a hard year, let's just be honest. Like it was a really tough academic year of 2020-21. And now we're going into 2021. And some schools have started, some have not. So how do we get our kids excited about this school year? Absolutely, we face that as administrators and as educators on our end for sure. We are actually gonna have a red carpet arrival for our students on the first day of school. We have a cheering section set up. We wanna get them excited because this is a momentous occasion that we all get to come back together. You could do a smaller version at home. You could do a celebratory breakfast. You could get them together with maybe a couple of friends and classmates ahead of school starting meetup at a park. I think a lot of our students are gonna feel social anxiety going back. As hard as it has been to be isolated, it's going to be really difficult to re-enter into the pressures that often come from being around a classroom full of students to oftentimes the propensity is to be judgmental to make students feel insecure. So getting them together with some friends and classmates ahead of time is such a great way to start to rebuild that community. It gives them a sense of familiarity as they walk back into the front doors of school that may feel very unfamiliar again. Tapping into that, introducing them to their teachers ahead of time. We've had a couple of students who have come to school masks on of course, but they've gotten to tour their classrooms and see where their desk is going to be and how the room is set up. I think any ways that we can make school feel familiar again is gonna really help ease the anxiety and to get them excited because the reality is we're all craving that sense of normalcy again. I love that. And we were saying, and now there's a question, I'm gonna do the Q&A and then I'll move to the chat, but just the breakfast idea, so fun. I'm just like thinking, I mean, it could be as simple as like honestly, like pulling out some frozen waffles and putting something special on it. Yep, exactly. Candles don't have to just be for birthdays. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Our next one is from Cora Kelly. There is a lot of conversations around SEL. Seems even more important than academic successes. Sorry, I just swallowed something. What do you think of this and how do you weave the two? SEL and accountability for doing what it takes to get in college or slash higher ed. Absolutely, that is such a great question. The reality is that if our students are not feeling confident, if our students are not feeling supported, if our students are not feeling that they have the community around them to support them, they're not going to be their best learners. They're not gonna be able to engage fully in the academic instruction that we are providing to them because they're gonna second guess everything or they're not gonna contribute because they're afraid of what the response might be. And I think one of the great things that schools have really begun to tap into is that social and emotional learning doesn't necessarily have to exist in its own silo. Sure, we do have time built in throughout the day where we maybe have overt curriculum that we're using. We have overt community building time in our classes, but I have seen teachers who have woven social and emotional learning into debates, for example, in humanities class, where they have taken an essay that instills an understanding of compound and complex sentences, but they're interviewing a classmate and getting to know that classmate on a deeper level and getting to then celebrate that classmate in front of the class by reflecting what they've learned to everybody else in the group. Additionally to that, there is, I know the second part of this was as we're trying to get them into higher ed, which has just become this Petri dish of competition, we have to enable our students to see where their own unique talents and abilities are. We may want them to be on the football team, but they only want a code. We may want them to be a ballerina or a singer or a pop star or a soccer player, but that may not be what they want for themselves. And so, going back to really having those authentic conversations with your kids where you enter into it genuinely interested, genuinely listening into what is their vision for their life? Where does their faith lie? Where do they see their road to higher ed or maybe not higher ed going? And if it's not higher ed, then have that conversation of well, what is it that they wanna do? And how can you support them in that? How can you help them be as successful as they can be in that path that they are forging for themselves? Doesn't mean that you leave your opinions beside. It doesn't mean that you don't leave your opinions and you don't instill in them the understanding that maybe they wanna do art, but they still have to do math. They still have to do science. They still have to have those foundational understandings because even in art, they're gonna have to understand the composition of paint that they put together or the degrees that they have to put that clay piece into the kiln for. So finding ways to really marry the practicality with their own individual life's vision is going to lead to really authentic conversations with your kids. That was just great. I was like thinking of all of my own things that I need to work on is a great thing. We have a really good question in the chat, Meredith. So this one has a lot to do with parenting styles, which I'm sure you get as a principle. I'm really curious. So what do you suggest when parents are conflicting parenting styles and the child is caught in the middle? So for example, when one parent has no boundaries or no chore expectations, this one is in particularly for 11 year old, but I'm sure we can apply it across the board, allows never ending screen time, even if they have been asked several times, like this and then how to pick something else. And so how does that navigate that when that's actually, the parents aren't the conflict and the child is caught in the middle? Absolutely. I have seen this time and time again. And I'm gonna throw my fellow educators into the ring here because I have been brought into those conversations oftentimes. And I think that by bringing teachers into that dialogue, not the personal matters behind the conflict, but rather where is the area of conflict? We oftentimes can be the source of compromise because at school, we're allowing screen time, for example, but we are also establishing limits. And so if we can somehow help to broker that compromise between two conflicting styles to bring in the idea of limits, but to also bring in the application of usability of technology, we really can aid in those conversations. The bottom line is this, never, never put your student in the middle. And I would say that by the time your student is around the age of 11, 12, 13 even, that's really right time for autonomy, where you both can present both sides of the coin and start to help them develop their own sense of compromise, help them develop their own independence in making some of those decisions for themselves, establishing the boundaries that they know are gonna help them be successful. Let's talk about how much sleep you need at night. Remember the other night when you only got five hours and you were so grumpy and you were up watching YouTube? How can we avoid that? If you start to put some of the onus back on them, it will really help them also feel that opportunity to be part of the conversation, not just being relayed back and forth between two conflicting opinions. But again, I really, really think that oftentimes school communities, educators can serve to be a great middle ground in helping conflicting sides come to a sense of compromise and a meeting of the minds. That was great. I know we may have time if anyone else wants to put something in the chat or getting, I think we were writing about an hour. I wanted to make sure we have time for a raffle, but please you guys, if anyone has another question or wants to raise their hand or answered any, I'm hoping we have answered everything. Yes, the book is available. I love Copper's Fields and Books, Inc. and Kepler's and bookshop.org, Bards and Noble at target.com and Amazon. So please, that is great. Thank you for, yes, Buying Local. I adore, I absolutely adore Books, Inc. And they have great locations as well as actually Green Apple Books there in San Francisco as well. Okay, I wanted to also, how are we managing this raffle? Anisa, I have a question for you. Can you tell how many people are we able to do it live? Hi, we can. Ask your local library, you're right, to purchase the book. Patreon request is our number one and that goes for all libraries. So ask your library to buy your books for you. Ask your library and also you can do library and do you buy digital as well? Do you buy ebooks? Of course we do. So the ebook is book on ebook and print. Yes, you can buy it on ebook and print. So how can we manage a raffle? How can we? We also have our YouTube viewers, which are four and actually one of them does have a question. Oh, do you wanna take it? Sure, yeah. Sure, I will. Do you have time, Meredith, to take it? I'm gonna turn off my lights, sorry. It's a heavy one, Meredith. How are the schools helping children cope with COVID deaths close to them? That's a big one for sure. I think that helping students just understanding the reality that COVID has brought upon us is first and foremost, that COVID has brought change, that COVID has brought sadness, that things in life are very different now. I think one of the most important things is that you talk with your students about how you as a family are working to keep them safe, how you know that their friends and families are working to keep them and their friends and family safe. That this is one of the reasons that we have these safeguards in schools to begin with. And if there is a tragedy where a classmate gets sick and God forbid passes away, that you use that as a moment for your students to be able to celebrate their friend's life, to not necessarily focus on COVID or the reasoning behind it, but rather let's have a conversation about what you loved about this person. How can we celebrate and commemorate what they were in your class with your classmates? And I think getting the school community, your class community together, to be able to reach out if a student is ill, to reach out if a fellow parent or guardian in the class is ill. Again, if that outreach is that way for students to be able to connect with one another, all the while really showing them comfort during that time. Thank you so much. And also I saw that you used a random picker. I remember that you are just so resourceful, always Meredith, I think that's your principle in your educator in you. It's such a teacher move. It's such a teacher move. I think they did tell me about this random picker and I thank you, Meredith, because it's such a teacher move to be able to do it like that. I love it. So here we go. So is it Lois? Lois, wherever you are, we are going to, if you feel however you want to grab your name, you can private message me or we can get your email, but we can send you a physical copy of the book along with a really pretty tote bag and I love what you do. So we got to pick one more who will get a digital code to download. If you want me to email you, you get it and it can go to any device you want. It's not a PDF, it's an actual real digital e-book. So if Meredith, if you want to use your random picker and we pick one more winner. Okay. This is fun, by the way. And Anissa, we want to give you, I can also get you a code if you're interested in a digital format for the San Francisco Public Library. It's wonderful, that'd be great. The second winner is Jeanine. Congratulations. Thank you so much for being a part of this tonight. Awesome. Oh, second winner is, and this is Kat, okay, perfect. So second winner is Jeanine. Okay, perfect. So Anissa, if we can get these names or these emails to me, I'm going to put my email quickly in the chat. And if anyone has any questions, I, whoops, you guys can see my fingers. I'm sorry about that. So anyways, anything else? Did you have any questions or before we close? Wonderful. And yeah, I can definitely email with our participants since they all registered and we can connect them. That would be great. Yep. And we'll send them digital codes and we'll give that also to the San Francisco Public Library, you know, as well. And Meredith, this was so delightful to just listen to you. I think I got just entranced on some of my own things, whether I'm going to make Mickey Mouse Ego waffles with just like, and go pick up a different shape at Safeway. And you know, that you can be a busy person and a parent and still like, I just, that just gave me such a nice thing to think about this week as we start school. I'm so glad we all, we've got to stick together in this because it's not going to necessarily be the easiest year ever, but we can do it and we've got to work together on it. So thanks for being here, Angela. And I just thank everybody for coming. And again, thank you San Francisco Public Library for having me tonight. Absolutely. One thing before I go, one thing that I just love about the book is the pull out quotes. And I often will as a parent, everyone, they're like, almost like you could like take it out and like put it on your wall someday. But it's a great way to kind of just, if you don't need to read sometimes a book, we don't use cover to cover. And we just need that tip, that moment, that advice. So I really do love that about tonight and just know that that is part of the book. But I wanted to just say, believe it with one thing, when someone is going to teach your children about life, I implore you to be this person. And Meredith, this is one thing that I always come back to as your publisher and as a mom, I would just always come back to that I need to be, I implore that you've told me always to implore the person. So I hope I wanted Anisa to leave that with sort of the audience tonight that Meredith is really the champion for us to really parent our children. Sounds like a great way to leave it. Friends, thank you, library community, we thank you and we'll see you tomorrow or whenever. Have a good night. Good night everyone, bye. Thank you.