Steven Thompson
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Hi, I am Steven Thompson. I am a Creative Content Creator.
I start and complete projects.
By day I am an educator, a school administrator to be exact, my title is The Associate Director of Curriculum and Instruction. I work with teachers and students with special needs. I left the classroom in 2007 and have been an administrator since. I consider myself more teacher than administrator.
When the day is over, I turn to my creative endeavors.
- I am the host of a Podcast called The Steven Thompson Experience
- I write a daily blog about life and my experiences
- I am a published author - you can buy my debut novel here
- I publish a newsletter called A Shot of Dopamine
I play the saxophone, buy more books than I can read, hang out with my wife, and son, go to church and watch lots of sports.
I have lived in Los Angeles for the last 20 years but I am still a die-hard Chicago sports fan. Chicago is where was born and raised. You can take the man out of the Midwest but the Midwest values of hard work, service, and caring for others still remains.
Oh yes, one more thing. I love to drink coffee, and go to Coffee Shops.
If we ever meet in person I promise to listen, ask questions , and I won’t talk about myself.
Even writing a biography makes me feel uncomfortable. That is ok, because we all are a bit uncomfortable and it is ok to admit it.
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Steven-Thompson.mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe
Hi, everybody. This is Gustavo, the host of the Enabled Disabled podcast. I am really happy to have Stephen Thompson with us today. Stephen is the head of curriculum for Almanzor Academy. I'm in California, and they are part of a bigger organization called the Institute for the Redesign of Learning. And we are going to dive into a bunch of different topics around education, around how parents can better support their children, encourage their children, and some of the challenges and adaptations that Stephen has seen as an administrator in this really interesting institution. A quick description of myself before we start. I am a middle aged Latin American male. I have Brown hair comb to the front, and I am currently in my living room, which has some blinds in the background, and I am wearing a light Gray Polo shirt. Steven, welcome to the show. Can you please introduce yourself and describe yourself a little bit?
Sure. Hi, Gustavo. Thank you for welcoming me and having me on the show. So my name is Stephen Thompson. I'm a middle aged African American male. I have no hair whatsoever right now. I have blue glasses. I have a blue Polo shirt on currently in a conference room at our Academy. And behind me is a bookshelf and a soccer ball that was autographed. It's a Champions League soccer ball. I'm a big soccer fan, and so is my boss here. So I'm using his office for the meeting today.
Fantastic. I'm a big soccer fan, too. So we'll have to talk about that next offline a little bit. Yeah. So can you tell us a little bit more for the people who are not familiar with it about Al Manzer Academy, what you do there, and the Institute for the Redesign of Learning. I know that there are two academies, and you have a bunch of services that you offer. So let's dive in and talk about that.
Sure. So I'm here at Al Manson Academy, and we're a K to twelve, what's called NPS. So that's a non public school. We contract with local school districts. And the students that come here, they all have special needs. And they come to a point where they were unable to function at their regular school district. And they come here to have their IEP service. We're part of a larger nonprofit called the Institute for the Redesign of Learning that was founded in Doctor Nancy Lavell. And we have several arms to the nonprofit. We have an early education center for children who are in preschool. We have a transition in adult services Department. And that services individuals. They call them clients from 18 to 59, and they develop workplace skills, independent living skills transitioning into the adult. So we have clients that go into workplaces. Some have job coaches. Some don't have job coaches. We also have a mental health services that provides counseling to both DMH counseling and what's called FPS counseling, which is emergency counseling. We contract with hospitals. So if somebody is in crisis, we send out a team of therapists, enable two local hospitals to be able to work with individuals who are in crisis.
And then we have two education centers. The center that I work at is Al Manson Academy. The students that we work with usually have disabilities that fall within emotional disturbance. Oi a few students with autism. And then we service that population. And then we have another center called Westmoreland. And that Institute Academy really serves a lot of students who are autistic and on the autism spectrum. We have students here who are on the autism spectrum. But West Marlin, that is the population they cater to that is students with autism. A lot of students who are nonverbal and both verbal. So that's what we serve. That's what we do out here. And we are located in South Pasadena.
It's a great area. I grew up in Los Angeles. I miss it, but it sounds like a really impressive non profit. Do you take are you serving only children and young adults in state, or do you have some cases where people come from out of state?
No. All of our students come from in state through the local school districts here in California. Okay.
And I'm curious, Steven, because you've been teaching and now has had a curriculum and involved with education for a really long time. When did you first start to develop an interest and move in the direction of I want to be a teacher. I want to get involved with education. How did that happen?
What happened in College? I went the reverse route in education. I started out actually in College. When I went to graduate school. I was on the debate team in College, and I got an opportunity when I graduated College to coach debate at a College. And then from coaching debate at a College, I started coaching home school students in speech and debate. And then I moved to California. And then when I moved to California, I've been doing education. Right. I was working with the College students. I even had a title adjunct faculty member. I was in my 20s, but I had a nice office called me an adjunct faculty member. So I obviously can't get into a College teaching position. So let me just go education route. So I found a job at an elementary school. I was teaching first and second grade. I did that. And then I worked at a learning center, and that's how I got started by teaching high school, teaching College home school kids. And then I just jumped right into teaching elementary school students. And then from there, I went and got my licenses and degrees and worked my way into being an administrator, which I currently am today.
Interesting. Can you tell us a little bit about why the why? Like, why did you continue what were you gaining from those teaching experiences that made you want to continue down that teaching is a relationship business.
When I tried other professions, I remember trying sales. When I got here, I remember trying a lot of different jobs when I moved to California, and it was almost always this is what I do from eight to five, and then I go home and then I'm done. There are so many relationships that you build in education, not just with the students, but with other teachers, with parents. There's a lot of problem solving that goes on. And then at the end of the day, I feel like, you know what? I helped somebody today, and I did well today with somebody, and that is fun. And I think being a teacher, you're really in control of your day. You're like a CEO of a business because you have in a classroom, you have 24 kids who depend on you, and then you have another 24 sets of parents that depend on you. So just doing the math right there, that's 60, 70 people who depend on you, and you set the day. I got to write my own curriculum, I got to do my own lessons, and I'm a creative person, so being able to do that was fun.
I enjoyed doing lessons, trying out things with students. Some things failed. Some things worked really well. You have AHA moments. Every day was different. It wasn't like, okay, it's 03:00 and I'm sitting here not knowing what to do. So that was really fun. Just being able to be in charge of your day and the people that you meet along the way are always a fun part of being an educator.
Was there any creative aspect of the curriculum that you did stayed with you? Were you still trying to use it today or anything that really had a strong impact on a group of students that you weren't expecting?
You know what? I do a lot of writing. I'm actually doing a schoolwide writing program right now. I'm a writer myself, so I would always put writing into my daily curriculum with the students. We always do funny. I would always do funny writing prompts in the morning, and then I still carry that with me today where I doing a school wide writing program. That's one thing that has stuck. I always have enjoyed public speaking and making skits and those types of things with the students. I haven't been able to do that much now as an administrator, but I am able to plan events at school to be able to express creativity with students. We have something coming up in May that we're working on called like A Celebration of Learning, where we're going to have some of the faculty members who play musical instruments. They're going to do part of a show. They're going to have the students be able to bring up works that they're proud of and showcase it. So that's what I'm looking forward to doing, that those are the types of things that I really get a lot of joy out of because I get to plan, and then I get to see the students hold off what we're planning.
That's always fun.
Yeah, that's a good one. I wish more of my teachers had done things like that. So can you tell us a little bit more about what your day to day looks like now at home? Answer. And what are the chief kind of roles and responsibilities? And what are some of the things that, for example, for people who don't know what is an IEP?
Sure to start off with an IEP is called insured, an individual education plan. And students with special needs, they're not the easiest way to explain it. The IEP houses all of your educational goals. Say, for instance, your math goal, your writing goal, your reading goal. It has that in there. So it'll say, by this time, student will be able to do X-Y-Z in their academic topics. It also houses their services that they have. So students have occupational therapy, students have counseling, students have speech services. So all of those are put into the IEP document. Once a year, we have a meeting, and then in that meeting is the parents, the students, the service providers, the teacher, and we collaborate on the student's progress. We talk about, has the student met their math goals? Have they not met their math goals? Have the students met their counseling goals? And then we set new goals inside of that IEP. And those meetings last from they could be an hour to 2 hours every three years. A student has what's called a triangular. And in that IEP, a student is what they call reevaluated. So what they do is they'll test the student to see where are they at functionally.
So they'll look again at their eligibility that qualify them for an IEP. We'll give them psychological testing to see where they're at as far as their mental processing. They'll give them a full battery of academic testing to see where they are at academically and see if their disability is impacting their academic performance. And that's what you will determine. If the disability is impacting their academic performance, then we have to make decisions as far as what track they go on for their curriculum. So those. I do a lot of those meetings. So every student here at our school has an IEP. So I'm doing over 100 IEP meetings a year. I have two to three IEP meetings a day with those.
That's a lot. And your role in those IEP meetings is to advocate as best as possible for the students?
Yes. I'm the administrator. So sticky problem. A lot of times I'm there in the meeting and the teachers are doing the reporting because they're with the students every day. The providers are doing the reporting. I'm there for sticky situation. Maybe I'm a cooler, right? If a lawyer comes and it gets a little bit heated. I can bring the temperature of the room down. I'm there to answer questions. I like to solve problems. Maybe there's a mix up with the transportation. Maybe I can smooth that out. Maybe we had an IEP recently where a student was new to the school and he was a diabetic. So I was able to okay, I can talk to the school district and have them get the diabetic meal plan to the mother and get the form filled out for the special accommodations needed. So those are the types of things I like to enjoy doing when it comes time to graduation. I'm the one facilitating and working with the district counselors to be able to make sure the students have enough credits to be able to graduate. So I do a lot of the back end lifting for a lot of sticky situations so the teachers can focus on reading, writing, math, and a speech person can focus on speech.
The end of the IEP. I'm the one who has to sign off on how many minutes does the student receive each year for each service? You know, how do you get to go to summer school? A lot of the nuts and bolts I do and then answering parent questions. There's a lot of legal nuts and bolts that I work through, and if something comes up, somebody needs a question answered. I would do that for them, or I would find out for them. There are some things that maybe I don't have a decision making power on, but I know who does, and I can steer that parent in that direction. So that's what I try to do, because sometimes IEP parents have had they get testy and parents have had bad experiences. I've been in them where parents have had bad experiences. So I try to at least let's bring the temperature of the room down. We're all here to help the student succeed, not trying to prevent the student from receiving something, and let's just work together and get the best outcomes for the students. So that's what I try to do in my role in an IEP.
Okay. So like an example of a situation where something might get a little testy is the parents might feel like my son or daughter needs extra time with physical therapy or occupational therapy, and maybe the school is saying otherwise. So you're mediating that and trying to find the best solution.
Yes. And that's the perfect example. That's something that will come up frequently. And the easy answer is they go to an assessment and the assessment is usually determined. I wish I could say just give the student 30 more minutes of OT. But usually what they'll do is and it's hard because sometimes I know they want a yes right away and they don't get the yes right away. They get upset. But sometimes it's not a yes or a no. It's a process. And if you understand the process, you can get what you want usually the most time, at least you get an answer. So usually in that situation, okay, we're going to recommend you for another assessment. And we'll look at what the data shows, and they'll have the OT person do the assessment. And if it's found that they need more OT, then they would give them OT. And it really is learning because we work a lot of districts. So I know there's some people who will green light the more OT in the room. And there are other districts that don't OT, don't green light into the room, and they ask for an assessment.
So I learned that, too. I try to learn what each working with each district representative, I try to learn what their process is. Once I learn their process, then I can help the parent navigate that process because it can get emotional. But if you know the process, you can bring the emotions down and at least get them on the path to what somebody wants. And that's usually try to be the best solution for everybody.
That makes sense. And that's a really important role. And I think something that not all the schools offer. Right. You're in a unique position where you can be more of a mediator and an advocate for the student. I think sometimes at least the stories that I've heard, the parents end up being the chief advocate and it's them against the school board, kind of, is that accurate, you think?
Yes, that's very accurate. And I try to read the room of who's coming in to represent the parent, and you can tell there are some I believe there are great advocates out there, and they're also I believe there's some bad actors as advocates. And you can know pretty quickly who's for the student's best interest and who's trying to get extra billable hours from the school district. You can tell that pretty quickly in a meeting. And even in those situations, I don't try to hook into the emotions, but I do try to say, okay, you lay out the case plainly, and it's pretty much exposed. This person doesn't have as much experience in an IEP, and maybe they watched some movies or something, and this is what they're trying to do. But there are strong advocates that they know special education, they know the law, and they're in the best interests of the students. And maybe they may be perceived as annoying, but at the end of the day, I do believe that this is their child, and these are the services that they want for their child. And I'm not somebody who's holding them back from getting them.
I want to help them to receive them.
And what ends up happening. We have a lot to talk about. So I do want to keep the conversation moving. But I'm just curious what happens when the parents maybe aren't as informed or not as involved and they have these IEP meetings. Does your role shift in a meaningful way where you take on more of the kind of director of, hey, I think we should do this, or I think this is important.
Yes, I will do that in situations, and I will have to do that. I'll have to say, here are the options, plain, and here are the options that are available to you. I was in a meeting recently, just today, and there was a student who wanted to go back to his regular public school. He's 18, he's an adult. He's aged out of his regular school. They won't take him back. And I just had to say that it's not personal. You're just too old. Here's your options. You can go to a continuation school, you can stay here, okay. And that's what you can do. And just seeing these options playing, and it's not personal, but this is where it's at. You're too old. You've aged out of your regular public school. But this is what's available to you, and this is what we're recommending. We're recommending that you stay here and finish your credits. So those are the types of things, if you're specific with hard truths. I think that's the biggest thing is to be specific. And just individuals are going to have to deal with it rather than trying to couch it or embellish it.
You just have to be Truthful and be specifics. And then I think somebody can deal with it and there's no hurt feelings. At least you're like, hey, this is what I told you was going to happen. Here's what's happened. Now we have to make a plan to deal with it.
It sounds like your debate background helps you immensely in a lot of these situations.
It does because I'm able to, because when I was in debating, you learn how to see argument, right? You're not getting emotional. It's like in the movies where you just out yell everybody. It's a formula. So I can see argumentation. I can see where statements are going. And that's what it helps me. I'm not looking at the person or trying to get offended or anything. I'm saying this is what they're saying, and this is what I'm going to try to say back to them.
And that helps a lot in terms of, I know you said now you've had a lot of IEP meetings on a daily basis, and that's a huge important role to make sure that the kids are getting what they need to progress. Can you talk a little bit about what you do in terms of being the head of curriculum? How do you establish what it is that is being taught, what the kids are learning? What is that role?
So I like to look at big picture items. I look at like for this year, I'm doing a school wide writing program. So what I do is I look at all of the students IEPs and their writing goals. And I talk to the staff. We've done a professional development around writing goals. Okay, let's look at the students. Look at your students writing goals. Let's look at how we're writing our students writing goals. And then let's bring together student work samples. And then I put everybody into groups and they look at their work samples, and they analyze their work samples. So that's something very specific that we do a lot of things is collaboration with our teachers. For instance, this year, teachers wanted to do some correlate reading from novels. Teachers went out and picked the books, and I made sure I ordered them for them. I like to do a lot of collaboration. I have, like, my big project that I want to run, and then a lot of it is really working with the staff on helping them, getting them the tools that they need for. I worked on getting laptops when I first started a laptop card.
Then there's certain technology that we use that I try to help teachers use them in the classrooms, and then a lot of it is there's district mandated curriculum and then giving the teachers the space to create their own projects and support them in creating their own projects and trying to get them the materials that they need. That's how we try to our best to work in collaboration with our students and teachers.
And what does that balance look like between what you and the teachers feel is important to teach and to have that creativity in the curriculum versus what is mandated. Like, how do you balance that seems like a big balancing act for all teachers, but how are you specifically doing it at Almancer?
It's a big balancing act, and it's harder here at Almancer because we don't have a traditional third grade classroom has third graders. We have classrooms where you have 3rd, fourth, and fifth grade, and then you have six students, and each of them has an individual IEP. So we go back and forth between a lot of some classes do independent work, and some classes do whole class instruction. So when you're doing whole class instruction with students at different grade levels, we work on really being targeted on what we teach and giving the teacher, okay, this works or this doesn't work. So that's how we have to approach it. High school rooms are different because the high school classes all have for diploma track. You have a sequence of courses that you have to take, so it's more going to be a lot of independent work, but then we can do group lessons, and we try to find the opportunities to do small group individualized instruction. And that helps out as we approach things with our students, because it's not the traditional you're in one class of English, and everybody is taking English at the same time, and they're all the same grade level.
So all our students are in a self contained classroom. So it's a little bit harder to do what's traditionally done in a classroom.
Do you find that if we were to create a utopia for a second here? Because obviously all of these children and young adults have their issues that they're working through, and there's some variation across that. So they need more individualized attention, they need more team helping them and encouraging them to learn and go through that process. But isn't that system of learning potentially better if we could apply it to more students?
I do think so, because I think what happens a lot of students that come to us, they come in crisis, so they don't really know how to be in school. And I think a lot of what has there are specific. There are a lot of behaviors that our students do that are undesirable on a public school campus. But we work with them and we have a specific behavior plan. The majority a lot of our work is done is behavior is getting the students to know how to be in school again. And one of our programs is called Taking Charge, which our founder developed, and it really works with the students to get them to learn how to be in school. I do believe that if we did learn how to work individually with students and not respond to our behavioral system management programs, for instance, a lot of schools and a lot of people will sell behavior management systems programs, and they'll say this is what you need to do for students. And those work for 80% of the students. But what do you do for the other 20? They'll just say 80 works for 80%, and then the 20% will get sent here.
And so what you're teaching did not work for these students. So students are not a computer program. You can't code them to do what you want. But I think there are individuals who get really rigid and they're like, you're supposed to do this and they're supposed to respond, and if they don't, then you're doing something wrong. That's not the case. So taking an individualized approach, realizing that each student is a unique learner, yes, that will help them to build trust with them and them to build trust again in the school, and then they will be able to succeed. I think deep down, a lot of our learners want to be successful. They just haven't been successful. And when you haven't been successful, there's the weight of not being successful. You begin to think that you're just not going to be successful, and then you begin to act out, and then you give the world thinks that you are this heinous person, always angry, but inside you are probably afraid and scared and you want to be successful, but you present yourself to the world differently and the world responds differently. And then we have problems.
So we try to work with a student to be able to do that. I think we say that we talk about social and emotional learning. We talk about mental health. But when push comes to shove, people are like, oh, we just got to get accountability. They just need to finish their work. They just need to get high grades. And we're like, look, I know people want to say we can walk and chew gum at the same time, but no, you can't or you shouldn't. Maybe if you want to really get the type of results that you want, you're going to need to slow down and set realistic expectations for where somebody is at. And sometimes people think, I believe setting realistic expectations mean lowering your expectations, and it doesn't mean that at all. It means that you're going to work with somebody where they're at. And if they're three grade levels below, that's where they're at. And that's where you have to start. And that's where I do believe we would make so many greater steps if we took that approach. But we are competitive culture, and we are a status driven culture, and I think we got to be willing to let go of that a little bit.
And if we do, I think everything will turn out fine. There's fear there too. There's fear that hopefully we don't do this and the kids won't turn out okay. You know what? They'll turn out fine. They'll turn out fine. If we take care of them now, they've got a whole lifetime to learn.
Absolutely. If you don't fit into this box, then you're out of the box and you're either ignored or this cycle of frustration, bad behavior, worse grades. I just want to get out of school happens and we missed this huge learning opportunity with a whole bunch of students. Like 20% is a big number. That's a lot of human beings that are not being encouraged, supported, taking care of, and given the opportunity to learn and explore and see what it is that they can do. We're teaching them how to think. We're teaching them how to behave. We're teaching them how to be better human beings. Hopefully it's not just how much history do you know? And how good are you at algebra? I don't use algebra on a day to day basis. So there's a lot more to education than we put in the classroom.
Yeah, exactly.
So you're clearly coming at this from a position of empathy, which not everybody has. Can you tell us a little bit about how you develop this sense of empathy, being able to put yourself in another person's situation and really trying to understand what it is that they're struggling with, what it is that they're going through so that you can better help them?
I think it goes back. I think like spiritual background, going to Church starting in College. I think that helps out a lot. Family background, learning how to serve basically for my mother, my father, that helped a lot. So I think a combination of those two and then just going through the years, you begin to practically know what works and what doesn't work and developing context. So when I began to see what students went through outside of school, I began to make connections to those sorts of things in their performance. I know for a fact that my father got ill when I was in 7th grade and then he passed away when I was in high school. I know that now I didn't have any programs back then, but when I look back, I know that there was a connection between me trying to process grief and loss and fear and not having any place to process that. I know that's a reason why my performance in school suffered. It was clearly because of that. Now I know it. So I can look and say, you know what? I know that these things affect students. So when a family even a simple thing that we think of as a family getting divorced, I know that has an impact on the student.
Some people will say, oh, they just need to do their homework. I remember years ago I was first a high school principal and there was a student who got into a fight and he ran out of school. And I went after him. I remember him telling me, you don't know what it's like. I watched my father beat my mother and the kids are about to be taken away. The mom had came to me and I actually had written something for her for the court case. And I sat there and I said, how can I just simply say, do your algebra and get this done? Because children don't have coping skills like as adults. When we face tragedy, we have family leave available to us. We have counseling available to us. We can take time off of work. We have all these things available to us. Nobody expects us to be able to just suck it up and do it. And if we do want to just suck it up and do it, that's our choice and hopefully we're making it. But a child doesn't have those coping skills. There's just a child. And we've got to remember that they may be bigger, they may be forced to take on a lot of things, but they're just a child.
So I'm always thinking through those situations, trying to find because if something's not working, I'm not just going to try to pound things home more. I just feel that empathy. And then you're taking things like the Alton BA workshop or reading like Renee Brown a lot. I began to see that this is what's going to help me be successful, because ultimately I want to be successful in what I do. I want to be successful educator. I want to be successful leader. And when you come down to picking leadership style early in my career, I was like, you're just too nice. And I used to just simply say, no, I don't think being a jerk is the best way to lead. Yeah, you can fear people into being compliant, but you're never going to build a culture that way. And I took the hits for being nice, but at the end of the day, I know that the way you treat people is going to help. It's not about being liked. I'm not really concerned with being liked and I know what helped, what builds a great culture. I know what builds relationships with students and what works.
And I do believe being empathetic and looking at another person as a human being with concerns and somebody who just wants to do their best, they're not out to get you. I think that served me better in my career. I think that has served me well and that's the way I'm going to go. It's tempting to take a shortcut and clamp down on somebody or lose your temper. I've done that. I've had that happen in my career where I've lost my temper. But I also know I've never felt great about it when I've had those moments. And I say, you know what, this is not how I want to be. This is not how I want to lead. And if I'm going to make mistakes, I'm going to make it trying my best to be empathetic and that's where it's come from.
I think that's a fantastic answer and I agree with you completely. So many people mistake niceness with being a pushover and maybe there are some people who are like that, but it doesn't have to be the case. There's being what you said, there's been a good leader creating a culture where people understand that you're there to serve them and help them and better prepare them for the next steps in their life. So having empathy and having understanding and making exceptions when it makes sense is really powerful and the teachers are going to get behind you more for that students, the families then I completely agree with that answer. Thank you for sharing that. Can you tell us a little bit more as fellow all the MBA, I always enjoy talking about that a little bit more about what you took away from that program and how it helped you as an educator.
I think I took away from the program. It was good to be with people who weren't in my field. I think that helped me be more curious and helped me be a little freer. We are around a lot of coaches, consultants, marketing people. I think that was fun relationships. I still have a writing group that I've been a part of for four years. I still meet with a creative group every other week, once a month now. We used to meet every other week. So I took away that. I think for me really showing my work. I think that was the biggest takeaway. I had always taken a lot of writing classes. Maybe I entered some contests. Now I self publish my books. I've been podcasting for five years. So the whole just show up and show your work. I really took that seriously. Does my podcast get a lot of downloads? No, but, hey, I'm putting it out there. I have a presence. Do I sell a lot of books? No, but I'm putting my books out there. Do I my blog posts. Do I do a lot of people viral blog posts? No, but you know what?
I'm showing up. And I think that was like I really like when Seth would talk about pick yourself, show up. Now, I think by doing that, there's opportunities. Like, I would never have met you without Alton BA. I would never have met people like Faye without Alton BA. And there's so many relationships that I have with interesting people that I have through that program.
That's a great answer. Again, and I agree completely. The relationships are a huge part of it. And showing up and just doing, not hiding from who you are, who you want to be, the differences, the changes that you wanted to make. I would not have started this podcast without having gone through the day for sure.
Yeah. And there's not, like, internal drama with myself, like the resistance, like, when I come to work and I want to do a project, okay, here's the project I want to do. And then I just jump right into the project. I know what I can do. I know what I can't do. But there's not like, oh, here's what I want to do. I want to do a year long writing program that I need to go talk to five people. Then I need to plan it out to make sure it's running perfect. I just go in and say, hey, you know what? This one will do this. I want to do a year long writing program. Here's my plan. Let's execute it. And that's what I got from the program. It's go ship. And I think that's my mindset. I'm going to ship this if it works. If it doesn't, I'll try another one. I'm not attached to the outcomes. So that is what I took away, too. And it's really helped my work. I wouldn't say I'm more confident. I just say the work matters. I'm just going to do the work, and that's it.
I think something that we talked a little bit offline about that I want to talk about here, which I think is really interesting, is the amount of degrees that you have had to get in order to become the administrator that you are today and how effective you think that process is towards being a good teacher, being a good administrator, being a good head of curriculum. Can you tell us a little bit about what school was like, how many different degrees you had to get and then where it helped you and where you think maybe there's a better way to create good teachers without having to go through so much school.
Sure. So, for instance, I'm in California. I have a bachelor's degree, naturally, in history. So when I wanted to become a teacher, what they call to get licensed, I had to get teaching credentials. So I went to a program with the University, and I got my teaching credential in two years. Now, that's only a preliminary credential. So then I had to go to another program after that for another year. Normally it's two, but it was a year long program, an accelerated one, to get my clear credential. So that means that I'm fully licensed and all I have to do is pay the state of California every five years. Along with those two programs, I had to pass one test, which is called the Sea best. Then three sections of what's called the C set, so that's three tests and one more test called the Rica. So four exams. All those exams now range between 100 and $150. When I wanted to become an administrator, I went back to school again and I did an administrative program. After I finished that administrative program, which took me two years, I did then take another program to what's called clear my administrative credential and then pass another test and clear it.
Now, recently, I work in special education. The only people that we can hire in special education are I was able to work in special education because I have an administrative credential, but I could not go and teach a class on our campus because I don't have a specialist credential, mild to moderate. So I went back to school again and I got a mild to moderate credential, and I had to pass another test. There you see all the programs that I had to go through and the test that I had to pass, the thing that I think about now for our younger teachers who are coming into the profession, you have to be confronted with this idea that a bachelor's degree is not going to be good enough. So you're 22 years old and you want to be an education, so you're going to have to go back to school all of these times, pay all of this money to take all of these tests in order to be licensed. Now, I've seen people teach in a private school, and they are educators for 2030 years, and they know how to teach. I've not been a better teacher because of any of the tests that I've taken.
And the programs I take, I've taken them just really to get the piece of paper. You learn about what you're doing on the job. There's no amount of textbook work that I've done, and you learn education theory, and I can drop names if I'm in a conversation. But as far as what I need to do, my job. I learned all that on the job. And I think if we want to get more people in the profession, we've got to look at this. If a person is 22 years old and they're looking at I've got to be a teacher, I'm coming up with doctor level student loan. How is that sustainable? Or I could go somewhere else and make money with no student loans. And that's something that we have to think about in the profession, and legislators are not thinking about that. I find that where I'm arguing with. We had a recent case where a University we had teachers here who are working full time and they were getting their teaching credential, which you're able to do. There's a part where you have to do student teaching. I'm qualified to work with teachers and mentor them through their program.
I'm also qualified to mentor administrators through their College programs. This University said we want her to go to a regular public school and be under a regular public school teacher. So that sounds fine, but we're in the middle of a pandemic and you want them to quit their job and go work for free. How is that tenable for somebody who's out of College? They have bills. They have responsibilities to tell them if they want to be in their profession, they have to go work for free. And then at the same time, we're saying we want to open up opportunities for women, minorities. So here you have a female Latina student who you want to make them work for free in order to get their teaching license. At that point, they were like, okay, we don't mean that they're perfectly fine to you to be their mentor. And it's those sorts of rules and regulations that each University can set on their own. But then they're creating obstacles. And I think the higher up, sometimes people go, they get disconnected. What's going on down at the bottom? Not I don't want to say the bottom below them on the field.
Yeah, on the field. And they don't realize it. No, it's not like that. This is challenging for students. We need to ease up the burden. Why are we spending billions of dollars on testing for educators when the tests are designed to trick you? You can go listen to Malcolm Gladwell's podcast and it will tell you all about the LSAT, how it's really just for time and you're taking a multiple choice test, but a lawyer spends most of their time researching. So you're creating an income streams for testing companies. You're not generating better teachers. And that is something that we should look at, because otherwise we talk about teacher shortage, and it's not because people don't want to go in the field, but the burden to get into the field. You're not going to tell somebody take on student loan debt. And then sometimes the obstacles to even get financial aid or grants or scholarships are like a maze to be able to get through that. So it's a lot that I really think that we really should reexamine. And why isn't a bachelor's degree good enough? And then in the field, I think we can work on a system of continuing education credits that you take performance reviews in your profession, but you can weed out bad teachers pretty quickly.
So I think that rather than burdening an individual with a lot of debt and a lot of extra work, I think that would be something that we need to look.
You raise some great questions. What are these tests actually for? What is this educational system actually doing? What is it accomplishing? Is it making better teachers? It doesn't seem like it. What do you think of this idea is if we were to structure it, I look at electricians, for example. So there are some really high level electricians. They have their licenses, but all the other electricians that they work with, they basically go through like an apprenticeship program where they're learning on the job, but there's always somebody and overlooking what they're doing as they learn. They get more responsibilities and they keep learning and progressing through that without having to go sit in an electrical engineering class or learn theories where you're actually doing it. It's so much more effective. And like you said, if you combine that with some kind of CEUs, why isn't a College degree enough to become a good teacher and interact with people and to empathize with them and to maybe not create curriculums, but at least start to build that day to day experience of what it's like to educate other human beings?
I think you're exactly right, because I see that. I see that here at my own school, there's two teachers who I think between the two of them have over 60 years of experience in the classroom, and they work together. And there are three or four new teachers who have gone through that room with them, who are now leading their own classrooms, and they're on it. Young teachers who learn from a veteran teacher, and when they run their own classroom, they're on it. And that's so true. They learn from the field. And I think especially in special education, if you just are in special education and you just go into College, you learn everything, and then you go and try to apply it, I think you're going to be dead in the water because each student is individually unique and a lot of students can see right through you. It's a relationship. It's really a relationship business. A lot of patience and a lot of Grace. Sometimes a lot of students said a lot of our best staff either had a sibling, sometimes in special needs, maybe they were in special education themselves. Really takes a person who has a lot of empathy, a lot of patience, a lot of Grace to be able to work in special education you're not getting that from a textbook, only you'll get techniques.
You'll know how to name drop, you know how to fill in the blank on a test. But sometimes things may fail you when you're right in front of somebody if you're trying to. Okay, here's a student with autism. Let me look at page 52. Or let me Google how to work with a student with autism. Good luck. Each student is different, and it just takes time, really learning who the student is, building a relationship with the student, treating them like a human being. And I think that is helpful.
Absolutely. I have two more questions, if you still have the time.
Oh, yes.
Awesome. So the first question is how do you help prepare your students if they want to go into College or University? What does that process look like?
Really? What we do is we begin when they're 14, and when they're 14, they have what's called an ITP, which is an individual transition plan, and then we go through that with them. We also have some career and technical surveys that our students take. So it's part of their IEP process to do a career assessment. So we do that. We also depending on what track they're on. There are some students who what's called a functional curriculum, and they're going to go to regional center. That's where transition and adult services come in. We try to set them up with the regional center. We try to set them up with a transition plan. We have a program on campus called Workability where students start off working around the school. And then we have actual off campus employment where we've partnered with businesses in the community like a Walgreens and Joanne Fabrics. And the students get actual practical work experience. Before the pandemic, I would take students to the junior College in the area. Now with the pandemic, lockdown is lifting, but most of the community colleges aren't allowing field trips. So we try to do that. A lot of the teachers do life skills in the classrooms where we do practical things.
Here's how to do a budget. Let's go get your California ID. Let's learn how to ride the train. So those are the types of things that we do and sit down with them and go through how to talk with a counselor at the College, where to go to the special education Department, take your IEP over there, have them look at it. Your accommodations still will be around. And then we work with the students that way and to help them get into where they want to go next. So it's something that we talk about once they turn 14. It's something that we talk about yearly in their IEP that's really well structured and thought out.
I like that because I've heard a lot of different experiences from a lot of different people now in terms of colleges and University. And some of them are much easier to work with than others. And some campuses are much more accessible than others.
Yes, exactly.
That's interesting. The other question I have for you is with respect to parents, and I know that you're not specifically in a role where you're serving the parents. But if you could give parents who their son or daughter has just been born and they have a disability or some kind of condition where they're going to need some additional help, what advice would you have for those parents? What are the important steps that they should start taking to be sure that they're going to be on a good path to help their kids as much as possible?
You know what? I would advise a parent to get as knowledgeable as you can about it, because there are a lot of people you're going to get a lot of advice from people. But if you can look at the advice from I'm going to look at the advice and I'm going to delegate rather than I'm going to look at the advice. And I need this plan of action from the advice. So I find parents are successful who learn about what the regional center is, learn about what the IEP process is almost being the squeaky wheel. If you get an advocate, at least you know what the advocate is. You know what you're hiring the advocate for. Not like I'm going to hire an advocate and then they're going to get me everything. Don't go into it that way. You become the CEO of your child. Really. You become the CEO of your child's education. You read up on it. The thing about it is what everybody doesn't know is we really don't need an advocate because everything by law is given to you. So if a parent takes the time to read everything, every IEP, a parent is given a parent statement of responsibilities.
It has to be given to them. It has to be provided to them. You take time and read it. You may need an advocate to go over it and ask questions and do that. Ask a lot of questions. I think it's set up for a parent to be able to navigate it on their own. Now, there's a lot of things that's hidden. You're going to need to ask questions. But that's what I would advise. Read every document, be prepared to read every document underline everything, highlight everything, ask a lot of questions, write your questions down. Then I think a lot of times they take you seriously almost. They get intimidated if a parent comes in and is quoting from the statement of responsibilities, they know that this person knows what they're doing. So that's really what I would advise. It's a lot of extra work, but I think you'll be more successful if that really becomes what you do at that point.
And I'm assuming it can also be challenging to know what is the right school. Where am I sending my son or daughter. If they've never heard of Almighty, how did they find out about Almighty? How do they know that you all exist and that's the place that is going to work best for their son or daughter?
So we're a unique school. I think a lot of times you find out special Ed searches, those sorts of things since we're unique and we're on a school on a referral basis. So a lot of individuals don't just pop up. We know I'll answer, but a lot of it's referral basis. A lot of it is from groups. I know that some of our families have found us through autism groups with other families, word of mouth, web searches. I always think that if you know your students in special education and you have your neighborhood school, you start there and you go talk to the special education Department and get a kind of a feel for them. And hey, this is where I want to send my child, look around your areas and find what is available to your student and really meet the people that are going to be taking care of your child. Just ask about who's in charge of special education. Can I meet with them? Who does your IEP? Can we talk with them? I think that'll give you right off the bat. You'll know, they respond flippantly to you. If they don't get back to you, then those are signs that you're thinking maybe I should try something else.
So I think that's always important. Talk to the special Department, not necessarily talk to the principal, talk to the person who's in charge of special education and find out what their program is like. I think that and then as a parent, you can make a decision who I'm working with, who's going to be working with my child, who's going to be working with me. Do I feel comfortable with them? How are they responding to me those types of things?
Do you find also that occupational therapists are a good source of that kind of information where they know what schools are doing well and which ones maybe you want to veer away from?
Yeah, I do think so. Because sometimes a lot of occupational therapists contract with various schools getting to be where a lot of those physicians, speech, OT, are not in house because a lot of people they contract out and they come in, they do services and they leave because it's one of those things where a school like financially you may have in your school two kids with OT. So having somebody there 40 hours a week for two kids, they're not going to do so they outsource. So somebody who is somebody like that, they can say, yeah, I go to all these schools and this one's a great one or this one is not a good one. So I think that would be somebody good to talk to because a lot of those special providers, go to various schools, occupational therapists, OT, like you said, occupational ape, adaptive, physical education, SLP, speech and language pathologist. Those tend to go into various locations.
Awesome. That's good advice. Last question is what have I missed that we have not discussed that you feel is important to talk about?
Wow. Boy, we've talked about a lot. What have we missed? Let me think for a second. You know what? I think this we need people to go into the field to work with students with disabilities. I was at our transition in adult services Department maybe last week, and they said we have a waiting list of clients, but we just don't have enough staff. We get a lot of referrals of students who need services. So we need good people who want to go into special education. I think there's a lot of people out there who want to go on YouTube or Mint NTFS NFT. But you know what? There is a solid career in education where you'll always have a job, you're always going to be needed. It's stable. You have time to be creative as an educator, and you'll be needed. So I really think that is something that we really need. And we need people in the field of special education. And I think it's rewarding. Again, it's not for everybody. But I think if you're willing to learn and if you have a great heart, I think you're needed in a multitude of anything, really from counseling.
We need counselors, we need therapists, we need speech people. We need regular teachers. So I think that's something that we should really lift up. Hey, there are people there's always going to be people with individuals with disabilities, and there's always going to be a need to educate them. They're not going to run out. And we need people to be able to be there for them. That's what something we need.
Yes. And you've spoken eloquently to about that sense of purpose that you feel like showing up and making a difference and trying things and feeling a sense of culture. I would imagine a camaraderie with all of the teachers and all of the people there. It's something that you're bonded to, something that it's important to you and you want to do the best you can and you're trying to make other people's lives better and you're seeing it every day.
Yes. That's what I mean. Even when days are hard because they're hard days, it's not an easy job at all. But at least at the end of the day when I'm driving home, I can say, you know what? The day may have stunk, but I think if we had fun, I had fun with the people I work with, and maybe these things didn't work out. But tomorrow is a new day and you show up and try again. Yeah, exactly.
So, Stephen, how can people find your books, reach out to you, learn more about you, and connect. Tell us about your podcast. Tell us about everything.
Yeah. So the Steven Thompson experience is my podcast and you just type in the Steven Thompson experience. I do a podcast every week Where I talk about I use music as the center of it so I always pick a song and then I always pick an unknown figure, Usually African American, from history that I talk about. I know a lot of times in school for me, I believe that civil rights was Martin Luther King and Rosa parks and then before that everybody was enslaved. But you would find that when you dig into history There were so many people who stood up against the system of oppression and slavery and they did their best and there's remarkable achievements that people did throughout history that have stood against oppression and wrong is always wrong. There's always people who stood against it and then I give a little leadership tip at the end of it so they're really short podcasts and you can find that. That's my website. To Steven Thompson experience, I have two books that I've written on Amazon. One is called Aqua funky Puss and a macrocosm of mayhem and the other one is called up the nose and back out again, fall in love and save the world.
I call it science fiction soap operas so they are really wacky science fiction novels that I wrote about is my email address. It's a character that I created and I write about time travel and being in the multiverse. I have a YouTube channel Where I just go out and I shoot videos once a week. Coffee and creativity, I call it and I just give some tips. I'm working on things like how to diminish your cell phone use and be more creative, taking personal rest time gratitude practices. So that's what I do on my YouTube channel and then I post blog post once a week. So it's all you were to type in the Steven Thompson experience. You hit my website and there's links to the podcast, the blog, YouTube, all that that's phenomenal.
I'm going to watch and read and digest all your content and we're going to have you back on the show. We're going to talk about that. Does that sound like a good time?
That sounds great. Anytime. Would love it.
Awesome. Thank you so much for being here, for taking the time for your generosity and really appreciate it. This was a great episode.
Alright. Thank you. Gustavo.