Host Lisa Kiefer interviews Vicki Abadesco, the director and co-founder of Soul Shoppe, an organization that teaches empathy, anger management, and peacemaking to school children and their adults with programs across the US, Canada, and Holland. Abadesco is an author, Packard Foundation-Ashoka Changemakers "Building Empathy" Award winner, and fellow for the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT.
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1:Method to the madness is next. You're listening to method to the madness. I Biweekly Public Affairs show on k a l ex Berkeley celebrating at bay area innovators. I'm Risa Keefer and today I'm interviewing Vicky Abba Jesco. She's the director and Co founder of soul shop, an organization that teaches empathy, anger management, and peacemaking to school children and their adults with programs across the u s Canada and Holland. [00:00:30] Welcome to the program. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:You're the director and Co founder of soul shop. What is the problem that soul shop is trying to solve? How to really create safe environments for kids and really safe environments for anyone. We know that we want kids to have a happy and fun and productive time at school, and sometimes that just doesn't happen for lots of different reasons. And so our [00:01:00] role is to go into schools and really support schools to create that kind of environment where kids feel safe, kids feel respected when oftentimes they don't. I'd be reading so much about bullying. I mean, it's in the paper magazine articles. It's not new. I mean, I remember bullies in school. Why is there such a surge of interest in it right now? Has something changed? You know, we've been doing this work for 15 years and I'm currently in my 30th year of education and I feel a lot of these skills [00:01:30] that we're teaching in soul shop.
Speaker 2:I've been teaching my entire career and the issues that we see in young people are really the same issues I feel like I've seen through the years. Um, and we started doing bully prevention work 15 years ago. It wasn't a so popular in the news or the media, but we know that the behaviors are still the same. That just seems to be a highlight of that in the recent years and again, with so many suicides and deaths and the social media issues, [00:02:00] we really see it highlighted. So we're just, we just have more access to the information. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a way that kids have always suffered and always felt alone and that the pain of that, and I think there need to get attention to be seen to be heard. I've shown up in so many different ways, right? We can say drugs and alcohol and you know, all sorts of things that we see, you know, those, those kids or those teenagers, those young people doing that are really just a need [00:02:30] for them to be seen and acknowledged in some way.
Speaker 2:And so both the students who are victims and even the students who are doing the bullying, we feel like everybody needs the same and equal respect. And how do we listen to both sides and how do we give all kids the things that they're really needing emotionally and socially? Well, I know there are several different people in this space. Yeah. How is yours different for us? You know, we really believe that learning and things shift through and connection. [00:03:00] And so a lot of other programs that are out there tend to be focused on how to teach the teachers how to teach this content in their classrooms. And we know that they're such a burden and expectation on our teachers and our educators right now. And so we want to come into schools and really help them with this issue to make sure that the, the issues and the topics are really taught in a way that the kids are grasping.
Speaker 2:I'm still, we're not a curriculum or [00:03:30] a video or DVD that a teacher can pop in and show the students. It's us really having a relationship and a connection to be able to teach these skills and these tools in real time. So we get to act out scenarios that are actually happening in the classroom and really help teachers resolve conflicts and help students talk through issues that are, that are showing up that might be disrupting the classroom and their learning. And also again, disrupting any fun that they might be having in school. [00:04:00] So you do this by teaching the teachers the empathy of feeling what that's like. So is it role playing? Can you describe, yeah, so for us, you know, when we go into a school, we see the entire school. So we see every kid in that school through storytelling, through activities, through games that we play with them, uh, through our own personal sharing is they really get an experience like, wow, yeah that has happened to me.
Speaker 2:And Oh that happened to you too. And then we get to ask the entire room, [00:04:30] how many other people has that happened to her? Have you felt that way? And when we see every hand go up, then every kid gets like, oh, it's not just me, I'm not alone. And then that experience that so many young people have about feeling so alone or feeling so isolated, there's some relief that comes to them knowing that the person next to them is also raising their hand. So you've been doing this since 2001 so you've had time to measure the results of all of this work. What have you found out? So [00:05:00] we found out a few things. One is I think teachers and principals really appreciate having an extra person on campus that gets to come in once a month or once every other month to have these kinds of conversations with the students.
Speaker 2:And we get to work with the students in a really different way and get to support the teachers. And so, you know, we'd been around for 15 years and those first few schools we had 15 years ago, we are still in those schools today. And to me that's like the greatest measure of the success [00:05:30] of our programs is the longevity in which the schools are committed to working with us and invite us in year after year to work with their students to really cultivate and hold this kind of a compassionate school community. Um, you know, at the end of every year we ask teachers how they feel we are impacting their school and when they tell us that they're spending less time on discipline, when we actually see discipline records on the school level [00:06:00] through the school district go down, principals will acknowledge that we are a big contributor to that factor.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We talked to you about a couple of things. What age is this the most successful in and how you engage the home life, which could be the source of the [inaudible]
Speaker 2:problem. Yeah. That's one of the biggest concerns that schools have is that, you know, we're teaching these skills throughout the entire school community, from the students to the teachers, to the administrators and all of the school support. Everyone gets trained [00:06:30] by us. And so we're always trying to bridge how do we have the students take these skills? They're learning here at school and take them back home. And so we do parent trainings and parents get an opportunity to practice the skills themselves and practice with the students. And how do you even get them to come in? You know, we do whatever we can to partner with that school to get parents in on that parent night where we get that opportunity. One of the things that we like doing is at the end of every workshop that we do, the students get a bookmark [00:07:00] and sometimes on that bookmark there are questions and we really invite the students who take that bookmark home, show it to their parents so they get like, oh, this is what I learned today and these are some questions you can ask me.
Speaker 2:And they're prompts for the parents so that the, again, they know what their kids are learning. Oftentimes we also get emails or calls from parents saying, wow, I didn't realize what my kid was learning through soul shop and thank you so much cause you know me and my partner were arguing and my kids stepped up and said, [00:07:30] hey, there's a better way. And they taught us how to communicate in a way where we're not raising our voices, we're not yelling and we really thank you for teaching our kids skills that we didn't have. And so we're communicating in a different way and I [inaudible]
Speaker 1:may not ever yell at my kid again because of these skills. If you're just tuning in, you're listening to method to the madness. A biweekly public affairs show on k l expertly celebrating Bay area innovators. Today our guest is Vicky Ebid Esco. She's [00:08:00] the director and cofounder of soul shock and organization teaching empathy, anger management and peacemaking to school children and their adults. Tell me about the differences of presenting this whole program from Grade School, Middle School, and high school. How is it different? What are your challenges? So when I started my career
Speaker 2:30 years ago, I worked in San Francisco high schools and I taught life skills and I taught violence prevention, conflict resolution, [00:08:30] and it was a challenge. You know, I was teaching very similar skills on that level. You know, they called me prevention specialist and I did a lot of intervention work on that level. And I started to question when does prevention really happen if we're doing true prevention one, does that happen? And so after 13 years of working for San Francisco School district, I thought, I want to try something. I want to see how can we work with younger kids, bring these same tools to [00:09:00] elementary schools and see how they embrace learning these skills at that level. Because by high school, they're just in the midst of it, right? There's lots of ways that they're being in the way that they're socialized is really anchored into their body.
Speaker 2:The way they communicate all of that from what they've learned at school, their communities in their homes, their families. Yes, they can learn new ways of doing things, but it's so much more of a challenge and so when we started looking at working with elementary kids, we thought, wow, [00:09:30] what would it be like as they're growing developmentally to learn these tools just in how to socialize and make friends and be friends. What if we get really gave them the language skills to be able to communicate and resolve conflicts at that age so that when they got some middle school, when they got to high school, when they're really faced with the peer pressure and the stress and all of the physical changes that somewhere in their body they're going to remember that there's another way that they're gonna remember that they have tools [00:10:00] and skills to make a different choice that's not going to hurt themselves or hurt someone else.
Speaker 2:The earlier the better. That's what you're saying. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. You're also an author of a book free to be and you've written curriculum and you have activity cards for teachers and all that stuff. Can you talk about this book free to be, what is it about? I was curious about the impact of bullying and I set out to just do interviews with people and part of this kind of, it showed up organically because [00:10:30] when I would meet people and they would ask what I did for a living, I would share with them and right away they wanted to tell me the story about how they were bullied some time in their life. And so stories from being kicked out of a friendship to stories about being bullied in the workplace, to being teased for their body, their high, they're weight smarter, this being smart, having money, no money, all of these things.
Speaker 2:And as the years have gone by [00:11:00] and people have shared so many stories with me, I could still feel the pain and the impact that that incident, whether is onetime or ongoing, had on people sharing these stories because it was always so ripe for them in their mind, the situation, the scenario, the pain, what it felt like. So I thought, wow, I think I want to write a book about this that just has the stories in them. And so people can just really see that no [00:11:30] matter what age you are. So I have a young person who is 11 years old who also wrote her own book about what it was like for her to be bullied to somebody in their sixties and so they've lived this long life and yet they still can remember being taunted, being teased, being chased down the street for living in a certain part of town.
Speaker 2:And also for being, you know, a single parent living with a single parent and it just never leaves. And that was what I was really curious about. And so when I was writing this [00:12:00] book, I just thought, wow, look at how profound it is. And for so many people, most of the people I've interviewed and that are in the book actually never told their stories to anybody. Even for them, sharing it with me and having it written out in this way in this book brought a lot of healing and closure for people because it was also the first time that people, that somebody just listened to them. And I feel like that is what's true every day when we walk into those schools is kids just want us to stop [00:12:30] and listen.
Speaker 3:Well, it's interesting to me that you know, these things, they don't ever leave you, which makes me curious about your life. Did something happen or things happen to you that kind of led you to education in the first place and specifically conflict resolution and all that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was a saying that our greatest wound is our greatest gift and I definitely believe that is true for me. I'm the youngest of four kids. My parents were immigrants to this country and um, did their best [00:13:00] to assimilate, uh, here and they did a great job and they did what they could to provide for us. And we had a house and food every day. And as a California, I was born and raised in San Francisco and it was still a struggle for my mom especially. And so she just struggled emotionally with lots of different things. So she started to, to drink and so she was an alcoholic and that alcoholism was just a way for her to cope. And so being the youngest kid, [00:13:30] I really felt like I was invisible. There was just a way that I wasn't really seen in my family. You know, we have students in our program that we call peacemakers.
Speaker 2:I feel like that's what I was when I was a kid in my family. And part of my role was making sure that everything was okay. And so when my mom was drinking, making sure she was calm enough that she wouldn't go into, you know, crazy psychotic episodes, which sometimes she would do. Um, and I really just felt it was my role to just calm her down and make things peaceful. [00:14:00] And so at a really early age, I really was able to, I've managed a lot of emotions and manage the people that around me to make sure everyone was safe. And meanwhile, there wasn't a place for me to go. There wasn't anyone for me to talk to. I'd go to school and not really know like, you know, I didn't feel like this was something I was supposed to be sharing with anyone and have my own shame and sadness and really felt isolated.
Speaker 2:And at an early age felt. Now as I look back, you know, really [00:14:30] I was a depressed kid and nobody really saw that. And I know that I must've gone to school looking sad or looking depressed and I don't remember one teacher ever saying, hey, what's it like to be you today? What's going on? You seem sad. You look sad. Is Everything okay? And back then, that wasn't roles of teachers. They didn't do that. And it wasn't until I was in middle school that I felt like a teacher saw me and asked me those questions and it was a first time that I got to [00:15:00] share what it was really liked to be me. And so when I was in high school, I got involved with the peer education program and I became a peer educator because I was that kid that everyone came to you with their problems.
Speaker 2:When something happened, people were feeling sad, they were having problems in their own family. My friends came and they talked to me. So I always knew that I was that person. And so when I went to college and I got a degree in psychology, I thought it was going to be a therapist because I felt like this is just [00:15:30] my natural skill. This is just what I do. And but it wasn't it. I felt like there was just something else. And so when I got my first job in a high school in San Francisco and was teaching a group of students who were in these gangs and it was my job to just keep them in school and just keep them enrolled and I just did everything I could to just be with them. And no matter what fancy curriculum I pulled out of the hat for them. Really what was most valuable [00:16:00] that somebody was just sitting with them, not trying to change them, not judging them, just being with them and listening to their stories and giving them a place to just be seen. Whether they were mad, whether they were sad, whether they were confused, whether they felt hopeless. So I feel grateful for everything that I've lived through because it's giving me that capacity to hold a lot of emotions and to really just be with people and to be with young people and anybody with whatever it is that they're feeling.
Speaker 3:You're in Canada and you're in [00:16:30] Holland and other parts of the United States are the challenges different outside of cal, I think of California is a little more progressive, but how, how is it different or is it different or do you have the same bullying, conflict problems everywhere?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've done youth programs all over and I'm going to say the bottom line is still the same that you know, you could plop me anywhere. So even in Holly and yeah, there's just something really interesting about this. You know, I want to do more traveling internationally to, to really [00:17:00] look at this phenomenon because I, you know, it makes me curious about do other kids and other places where, you know, in our country here we're so, we pride ourselves in our independence and being low, being able to do things to a level where, I mean this is where the isolation hurts us. Other communities and cultures where, you know, entire families live in a really small Shakka home room. Everyone sleeps together, everyone eats together and you know, for some cultures are almost like [00:17:30] literally we're like right almost on top of each other. And I wonder if they feel lonely. I wonder if they feel that same level of hopelessness that I feel like sometimes we hear in our young people,
Speaker 3:I want to talk to you about technology in relation to this because exponentially there's a tremendous amount of technology in these kids' lives since you, this program.
Speaker 2:How is that impacting what you do and in the schools themselves with the ability for kids to be on social media at all times? Yeah, it definitely [00:18:00] makes it a challenge for, you know, we see so much especially um, high school college where, you know, social media is just used in such a way to hurt other people. You know, again, I think there's a level of expression that is happening that maybe they're not able to get in other places. And so it happens through social media and I see that on a lot of different ways where, you know, people want to share like here's the highlight of my day, or wow, this thing happened to me. [00:18:30] Or you know, again to be able to use it to gossip about somebody to spread a rumor about someone. But there's still a place underneath it all where someone's trying to get acknowledged for something.
Speaker 2:Somebody is trying to be seen for something, you know, emotional intelligence, life skills, what are these things had been around for a really long time. And it's interesting for me to see us come back to some of these things that have been around, which are helping us to put down our [00:19:00] devices, figure out how to get eye to eye with somebody and really have those conversations because technology has been around enough so that we are seeing the impact that's having on our brain and the way you know, the different parts of our brain that's being used in ways and how empathy is really a skill that needs to be cultivated and that can be cultivated personally. Right? It's like we want to be able to make sure that our body language, eye contact, those sorts of things that are so important [00:19:30] are really helping, you know, putting down devices and being able to connect personally with people is what I feel like we're coming back to because of so much of what we're seeing happening to that.
Speaker 2:So for sure that the part of the brain that we're empathy happens. Is it diminished with technology? Do we know this? Yeah. There's some neuroscience neurobiology that are coming up with with some of the that research. And so this is what they were saying about why it makes it easy for somebody [00:20:00] to gossip or bully through social media because there's a disconnection there. There's not a personal connection. So if I know you, if I had a chance to really hear your story or get who you really are, what you're going through, I wouldn't even think about getting on social media and saying something bad about you. And so there's this place where yet it's like where does empathy really come into play? And so one of the things we're curious about and we know other folks are, it's like how do we then help to have this experience [00:20:30] of empathy or forgiveness and compassion?
Speaker 2:Where does that show up in the world? That leads me to a question I want to ask you. You're a fellow at the Dalai Lama Center for ethics and transformative values at MIT. I am really curious about what goes on there. Are these the kinds of things that you talk about? Yeah, absolutely right. So like his holiness, the Dalai Lama is really committed to youth global leaders. You know, he has a vision of how do we bring more compassion to young leaders everywhere. And so [00:21:00] part of that is some of the things that the folks at MIT are looking at, right? And so they're experimenting with both in person workshops, also different types of technologies and games to really bring to young people and in schools to really practice how do we really work with empathy in this way? And so, you know, one of the things that we're finding is that it's a challenge to just have technology do that alone.
Speaker 2:It really takes some human components [00:21:30] of whether it's just somebody facilitating a conversation about how to use this technology. It's still giving somebody a personal experience. Do you were chosen as one of six a Shaka changemaker awards? Was that a monetary award? Yeah, it was a, a what they called an empathy competition. And they were, um, you know, a show Kia changemakers along with Packard Foundation. They partnered together to really look at how are people building empathy through communities. And so [00:22:00] we thought, well, we definitely are building empathy through communities. And so we went ahead and applied in the competition and we were able to receive the award and it's been such an honor. But how much did you win? We won $100,000. Um, and it's been such an incredible blessing for us, you know, again, do you have to get grants every year? How do you fund this privately?
Speaker 2:Fine. A lot of private funding. A lot of individuals who really have seen [00:22:30] our work, love what we're doing in schools and know that we've been around as long as we've been around, money comes directly from schools and there are some schools that can't pay the full price of our program. And so getting donations and having programs like this really helped to supplement, um, those schools who can't afford to bring in a program like ours. Uh, the a hundred thousand dollars helps us to do some things that are new and different that we're looking at. We're looking at some online training as well. We're having [00:23:00] conversations again about, you know, how do we build something digitally to so teachers could download the two 10 institute them and their school well to do it more as follow up some ways to really help teachers and their own empathy building skills and you know, we want teachers to be able to have some of these conversations with their kids when we're not there and some of the teachers get that kind of training.
Speaker 2:I think that's one of the reasons we're looking at this online course to really have them look at, you know, how in a six week course can they just [00:23:30] work on their own empathy skills, you know, in order for us to be great teachers, anything we have to have the experience of it as well. That's one of my visions is that every teacher have that kind of training just for themselves so that they can find way where they can have more capacity, emotional capacity, so that when the things show up in their classroom, they can handle it better. That there is a way that they're not personally triggered by what's happening with the kids. That may be empathy, could be there as an option. Can you tell [00:24:00] us a story about someone or some school where this was, you have lots of stories. So I tell this story about this young girl, you know, we got a call from a principal, he said we're having an issue with bullying and will you come in and basically kind of fix what's happening here.
Speaker 2:And so, you know, he wanted to tell me about this kid and I didn't want to know. I just like, you know, let us come in and let's see what's happening. And he invited us to come in for one time to do this one assembly. And so we got on campus and as soon as we got on [00:24:30] campus, the principal wanted to point out this belief and we didn't want to know who this kid was cause it's not about one kid and it's about the entire school community. And so we start our assembly and we talk about feelings. And when we have so many feelings, we get really full. And when we get really full, we do things, push somebody. We might talk behind someone's back. We might ruin somebody's four square game, you know, we're just disrespectful. And [00:25:00] we asked, you know, how many of you ever felt that full little hands go up?
Speaker 2:And this is a room of maybe 204th graders. So we see those hands go up and then we ask is there anybody that wants to share what they're feeling inside you? And usually at this point when we ask this question, it's like silence. The kids are all looking around like no one wants to raise their hand, but we patiently wait cause we know what's in the room and we're not expecting, you know, this kid that they called us to this school to raise their hand, [00:25:30] you know, which just like it's anybody. We know, there's lots of kids who have really that they feel really full in that way. So all of a sudden we see this little hand go up and the whole room moves and then we hear like this whispering. And so we know this is the bully, this is that. We know it.
Speaker 2:So this sweet little girl comes up to the front of the room, she sits in what we call the chair of help, and we ask her, what's going on with you? And she's got these little tears coming out of her [00:26:00] eyes. So it's like silence. And these kids are mesmerized that this kid who's been labeled a bully is in front of all of them crying. And so even right in that moment you feel something shift in the room. And so she says that she lost her best friend, that her grandmother died. And the room is stunned because this was a girl that when the principal called us, he said that they did everything to fix her behavior on the playground, including suspending her two [00:26:30] times for her behavior that they didn't know our grandmother died. I think they knew her grandmother died. I don't know if they knew the extent of the impact because here we had a broken hearted little girl who lost best friend.
Speaker 2:And so she went on just to share about how it's really harder to mom, how her, her mom doesn't want her talking about her grandma. Let's just not talk about it. She comes to school, she pushes people around, she creates havoc on the playground at recess. Nobody knows what to do with her and she's just [00:27:00] sad and brokenhearted. And so we asked her to tell us about her grandma. And so she gets a big smile on her face. She tells us how she made the best cookies ever. She was the only person in her life that told her she loved her and she was sad. And then we ask, you know, how many of you have also lost someone? Right? So we see these hands go up. So how many of you would be willing to sit with her and maybe ask her about what her grandmother was like?
Speaker 2:Almost every hand in that room went up. So a kid who previously everyone [00:27:30] was staying away from now is the most popular kid. Yes. What happens to this girl? All right, so a couple weeks later we call the school and principals like, yeah, it's really gray. We haven't really seen any more incidents from her or the kids are asking and they, he found that there was an opportunity for the other kids to share the people in their lives. They also lost it. They didn't know how to talk about doe. Now this girl becomes this, like you're saying, they can talk to someone they can talk to. That's really a beautiful transformation. Yes. [00:28:00] You know, so for me it's like that's, that's part of the success story. And so, you know, when you ask about the challenge, it's, you know, that school didn't have much more funding for us to come back and we would have loved to have done that.
Speaker 2:And so I would say that's always the biggest challenge is for us to be able to have the resources to be able to do followups for stories like that. What are your goals for the future? It sounds like you've done a tremendous amount. We are looking at models to be able to grow our programs throughout the country. Again, we're looking at some things digitally [00:28:30] so that that will help to make that happen. And we're looking at some online courses for teachers so that teachers everywhere can get even at least this first level course on how to get empathy skills for themselves. So again, that they have a greater capacity and understanding about that personally to be more available to their kids and their students. How do we get programs up throughout the country and also enough facilitators and train in a certain way so that I feel confident [00:29:00] that folks who are out in schools are really able to facilitate these kinds of conversations with kids because it definitely takes training and a lot of time working again on our own self development to be able to have the capacity to really work with kids on this level.
Speaker 2:It's fascinating to me all the ways that we have found to hurt each other through our words. Right? And any way that we can separate ourselves. So somebody else is just different, right? And we're all different, so we all at any time are targets of this [00:29:30] on some level it's so ridiculous. And then on another level, we can't seem to stop ourselves, but it's great that you've gone deeper to see that, that there's something else behind all of that, right? That's the superficial manifestation, right? If people want to get a hold of soul shop or you personally, do you have a website that they can go to? Soul shop, which is s o u l s h o p p e.com and to get ahold of me, you would just put Vicky v I C K I at [inaudible] Dot Com
Speaker 1:do you have a Jessica, [00:30:00] thank you for being on the program. Thanks Lisa for having me. You've been listening to method to the madness, a biweekly public affairs show on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. If you have questions or comments about this show, go to the calyx website, find method to the madness and drop us an email there. You'll also find the link to previous podcasts. Tune in again in two weeks at the same time.
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