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0:00:05.4 Vickie Brett: Welcome to the Inclusive Education Project. I'm Vickie Brett.

0:00:09.2 Amanda Selogie: I'm Amanda Selogie. We're two civil rights lawyers on a mission to change the conversation about education, civil rights, and modern activism.

0:00:19.5 VB: Each week we're going to explore new topics which are going to educate and empower others.

0:00:27.9 AS: And give them a platform to enact change in education and level the playing field. Welcome back friends.

0:00:36.4 VB: We're in it. It's June. It was just a couple weeks left for some of our listeners and it might be week two for others of summer break. But we are really excited about today's guest 'cause this is a topic that Amanda and I have addressed in various forms but haven't had a dedicated podcast. And that's saying something 'cause we've had a lot of podcasts, everybody. So I'm going to turn it over to our guest. Thank you so much for coming onto our podcast. Can you please introduce yourself and give us a little bit of an origin story as to how you came into becoming an expert in the field of bullying in schools?

0:01:21.3 Alain Pelletier: My name is Alain Pelletier. We say Allan in English but in our French community we say Alain. So there's an I between an A and the N at some point in there. Just 'cause the website is called Alain Pelletier so Alain Pelletier but it's not spelled Allan so maybe we can put that in the comments at the end.

0:01:40.5 VB: Of course.

0:01:41.4 AP: So I'm Alain and I'm a professional youth speaker on the topic of bullying. And I've been working full time at this for quite a few years now. And I kind of stumbled upon the subject and I kind of stumbled upon the career meeting. I wasn't on the track of being a professional speaker. I was on the track to be in the healthcare... And I actually met a public speaker, and he thought I was pretty colorful. And he says, you should be public speaking. And I thought myself, you're absolutely right. I'd love to public speak. And I wrote this speech. It's something on, I started off with a self-help. I called it the four needs. I had this speak theory, so I wrote a speech about it, and one thing led to another, and I had an opportunity to speak on bullying. And I didn't know how to approach it. I didn't know any theory. 'Cause I did study in education, but I was never a teacher.

0:02:37.6 AP: And I think at the end of the day, I think that that helps me 'cause whenever I go to schools they have an approach that's very theory and that's obviously extremely good. But it's missing a component in the process. And the way I approach it is as a person would approach a project with no necessarily have a background in studying right. I approach it very raw and the way I do it is I allow myself to get down to the kids' levels and... Emotionally speaking to speak to them at that point. And then I get the theory. So I start with the emotion and then I get the theory in instead of saying this is how you should act. 'Cause whenever we go into schools or whenever I... Maybe you guys can say that I'm wrong or right. But whenever I go into schools and I ask the kids what's bullying? Tell you what's going on, they all know what's bullying.

0:03:30.5 AP: They all can tell you what... Something in their own words but they're all going to tell you something good, right? But theater sells well if the theory is in if they know you know intellectually they know how to explain it, they understand it. Why does it seem to have the reverse effect, right? Why does it seem where we seem to have a lot more of it now in 2024 versus way back when, right? After we have all of those professionals into schools we have all of those classes given to teachers given to special aides. We have all these people that are extra qualified and we're still dealing with this a lot more so what is the... Right? And just by inverting the process right instead of saying something this is how it should look like, I just explained it here. Here's how it should feel. And then we put the theory in. So just the process of it makes it a much more it resonates with the kids. And then whenever the teachers do something with them it kind of resonates longer 'cause we have a reaction to the story.

0:04:35.6 VB: Oh, I love that. That is in sync with so many of the social emotional learning curriculum that a lot of school districts just recently have implemented. And I think that, you know, as children naturally feel their emotions, right? Along the way, you know, whether it's culturally, societally, you know, that gets molded into something different. But I mean, you look at a 2-year-old, they're gonna tell you exactly how they feel. And I think that it's such a wonderful approach to start. And like you said, it kind of... Feeling the emotion, so many of us just think about how we are feeling and don't really feel the emotion and so then to connect that for kids, that's also a lifelong skill that you're also able to kind of utilize in that situation.

0:05:28.5 AP: The subject is bullying, but the process is... There's two emotional process that goes on that emotional ride. First of all, there's empathy and sympathy, right? And they come really late in our development, but we can still plant the seed at early age in elementary Schools. The first thing is you need to realize that you're feeling something. And whenever you do realize it, have that conscience feeling, conscience understanding you're going through something. Try to put a word on it, right? Try to put on how you're feeling and try to verbalize it at the end. That's the first thing. And the second thing is to realize that someone else could feel a completely different emotion I'm feeling when we're faced with the same situation.

0:06:15.7 AP: That's why if I'm a kid and I call somebody else a name and a teacher says, hey, why did you say that? That was so mean. I'll say to them, that was just a joke. And they're right. 'Cause whenever I said it, I thought it was funny. And whenever I think it's funny, I think, believe and feel that whoever saw, received or heard that joke is feeling the exact same way I'm feeling when it's obviously not true. And the first step in order to understand that process is there's three things. One, we need to realize this, the first step is to see an emotion in someone else's face, not with our own, but in someone else's face. And then whenever we see that probably is gonna translate in something that we feel, and then we can put the theory on it, right? But it starts when reading of somebody else's face. So whenever I do the story is I kind of lean on that empathy and sympathy and I try to put the seeds in. That's when and then whenever you go through that process, that storytelling. But the storytelling is just a vehicle in which I generate, transmit and make the audience feel. The story... If ever you heard that story, you wouldn't say, oh my God, this is the first time I ever hear some of this.

0:07:29.0 AP: The story is inspired by true events, but is the common denominator. The number one thing I have from kids coming to me at the end is the exact thing happened to me, but they're not talking about the specifics in the story. They're talking about the emotional process I translated to them through that common denominator, right? We all have that hallways. We all have that car, right? We all have that room where mom and dad are not proud of us. We all have that classroom, we all have that in our mind. So the speech or the story that I'm telling and the story that they're listening and the movie that's being played in their heads, it's three completely different stories, right? So I'm kind of tuned to that process.

0:08:13.9 VB: So I love that. I love that you're able to go into the schools and have this presentation specifically to the students, right? As a starting point, I'm sure you've done it with professionals as well. What are one of the things that, and I don't know if you've had parents kind of approach you about this, but when they are, because when you have a parent get involved, as parents we sometimes see a situation. We don't know how our child may be feeling in that moment, but then we put on the story of that situation happening to us. And so then if we're offended by this, the child is offended, right? Or my own child. What's something important that you feel like parents should know when they're kind of dealing with bullying that is happening within a school setting? 'Cause they're not there, right? Like they're not witnessing it. They're only kind of hearing their child's perspective. And depending on the age of the child, you're kind of getting varying accounts of what's happening.

0:09:13.3 AP: That's an amazing question. I have young kids, elementary school. So I'll talk about my experiences as a father and dealing with schools. But I don't have the experience or the personal experience as for teenagers. And I know that people work at it, but I like... So the first thing that parents need to understand that, all right, the love that you have for your kids and the love that you have for your parents, it's called love. It's not the same emotion. 'Cause parents at some... We're all born to deal with the pain of losing your parents. That's the process of life. We're all supposed to live longer than our parents. We're not supposed to live longer than our own kids. You speak to everybody that ever lost a child they'll tell you the exact same thing, it's we're I'm dealing or I'm living with this pain that resides within me and it's gonna be there for the rest of your life, time is the essence, it's gonna make it better, it's not gonna make it go away. We don't have the tools in my DNA in my body as a human I have the tools to be able to go through the grief of losing a parent, all right, it's not fun it's hard, but it's doable compared to the opposite, right? So the love, all that love, it's not the same emotion. So whenever I become a parent, I feel this emotion, and we try to define it as best as we can, but we don't know.

0:10:34.5 AP: There's no other feelings like this. So the closest one is like our parents or our peers, but it's not the same.

0:10:41.8 VB: But it's not the same. Yes.

0:10:43.7 AP: It's a false understanding. I'm saying this and I wear the hat as well, right? There's a miscommunication or a misunderstanding. Whenever I became a father, I said, they're my kids. And the problem with that M. They're not my possession as my phone, or my car, or my house, they're not mine. I gave them life and my role as a parent is to show them how to use whatever I gave them and that's it. At first we have to make them live in, this I mean if I look let my child in a bassinet or something I'll leave it there I'm not gonna leave, right? I need to feed it. You need to give them warmth. You need to bathe them. I need to give them... But at some point you need to take those things out to make sure he or she does it by themselves. And the number one thing I ask my kids is, I ask them this every day. Whenever they come to me, they say, dad, here's... I made something. I made a drawing. I made... They're all proud. And I say to them, are you proud of yourself? And I want them to generate that emotions by themselves. I don't wanna... At first it comes from mom and dad, but they need to generate that emotions by themselves. That's the goal. And whenever that's achieved, my job as a parent kind of changed, right? I become a, not a bystander but...

0:12:03.6 VB: I mean a a guide. Yeah.

0:12:05.2 AS: Yeah. Well and I think that's so often where a lot of the way that children treat other children come from is replicating the action not just the actions but the emotions of their parents, the expectations of their parents, the way that their parents speak to other people, speak to them, and so I think that that makes so much sense in looking at like where does this come from. If they know if they truly know what is bullying why do they do that? I think it's it's absolutely to your trait.

0:12:35.6 AP: It becomes... There's a saying and I'll try to have it right, if you're not spoon-fed love whenever you're a child, you'll learn to lick it off a knife later on in your life. So yeah it's not my quote like it's someone's but I love... That kind of resonates with me so much. Whenever... However you act, however you talk to them, however you are with them, it defines them. You don't even know, but they're just recording everything and it's your non-verbal, it's your tone of voice, it's how you're... And we're all there, right? We're all losing sleep, we're all troubling, we all have something on our minds, we all have...

0:13:23.8 AP: We're pushing do that later. We're all doing it, right? But sometimes the math, and again, I can send you the proper quote, but I think it's, you need 10 minutes a day, personal one-on-one with your... And each child, one-on-one where you are not bothering them, you're not doing... You're just talking, right? And that skin-to-skin communication is absolutely unparalleled. I did a whole project when I was in healthcare on that communication, skin to skin communication for the first week of my life. When I haven't worn a shirt. Whenever I had my kids with me, it was consistent. And that's the part of communication. Your loved ones. Whenever you're touching your skin, it's amazing. The feeling is not the same, so yeah.

0:14:03.3 VB: Right. Right. Oh my gosh, this is so good. I don't even know where to go. There's so many different directions that we could go. Amanda and I both have littles. My oldest is five and then I have a 2-year-old. That's where I got the 2-year-old tantrum. He knows how to tell me his feelings. And then Amanda has a three year old. So like we're in it, right? And at various levels. But I think that that resonates so much. And to give, like you had said, you know, kids understand the concept of bullying. And Amanda, you had touched on it too. It's just like, well, they know what it is and so then why do they do it? And you had given us the example, Alain, of like, well, I thought it was funny, right? Like that child individually. How do you in your conversations with kiddos, do you use a lot of those kinds of examples? A lot of our kiddos use social stories like through a speech and language pathologist. If they have autism and they're gonna transition into a new classroom. And so for some kiddos what is beneficial is the social story or having them visit beforehand. What is kind of your process when you're speaking to the children about bullying and how it affects others?

0:15:13.8 AP: The special ed kids are usually my favorites 'cause I bring them with everybody else at the same room. I don't make special groups. I bring them with everybody and I always have good stories. And the best, 'cause you asked me. The best story I had in a school year, I had this little boy, he was, I don't know, grade four or something. And whenever he was with the rest of the school, he didn't like it. Socially speaking, he wasn't comfortable. So he went right under a table, the way far left side of the room.

0:15:46.7 VB: Oh, okay.

0:15:48.7 AP: Kind of followed him and they knew but they just let him go. And he had his back towards me all, in a fetal position.

0:15:58.1 VB: Yes, fetal position.

0:15:58.6 AP: He didn't wanna be there, but they kind of, you know, you need to be here. And when I started, when I speak, I don't tell the story as if I'm reading the story out of a book. I'm reading the story as if I'm the kid telling the story as if it right now at this precise particular moment. Right? So I play a role and whenever I speak to grade one, two, threes and four, five, six and high schools or parents, the role change, the story changes. 'Cause there's a lot more cyber bullying on, not that there's no at the elementary level, but there's a lot more at the secondary level or high schools levels. So the students and the acting, the kid that's telling the story kind of change. I kind of set myself at their level. So the way I act and whatever I feel and I generate to them is if you saw the speech giving to the grade one, two, threes, four, five, six and so on, you would see me working a lot more, having a lot more emotions and going deeper into them at the high school level versus at the elementary school level. There's a big difference in speaking to grade one to grade six. Right?

0:17:05.3 VB: Right, right.

0:17:06.3 AP: And as I was playing this character, he was slowly turning around and he was speaking and as I went on with the story, he was getting closer and closer to me, and the end of the speech he just threw himself in my arms and he wanted to give me a hug. 'Cause he felt all of that emotional charge. But he didn't know what to do with it. And I saw that the story, he wanted to hug me and the teacher said, no, you can't go or shouldn't go, but he threw himself on me 'cause he was going through all of those emotions and he didn't know how to analyze them, right? So he knew and I stayed on and I stayed at the end to talk one-on-one when everybody was out. And he was talking to me about all of those emotions. Like you said it they know, whenever they can verbalize and put words on them, it creates such a burden off of their shoulders. Right?

0:17:58.8 AP: So I have many stories like this, but this is my favorite one. That kid that started in the back of the room, hugged me at the end 'cause he wanted to find comfort. So yeah. That's the one nice story I have with a special ed kid.

0:18:13.7 VB: [laughter] No. I mean, I'm sure you touched so many students and in the way in which you present the emotional aspect first as a part one. And then really with the lower grade kids, that's where you spend a lot of your time. And I imagine for the high school kids, you kind of spend more time explaining or the logical part. Right? I know you've talked about like five different parties involved in a bullying situation. Can you kind of expand on that?

0:18:40.4 AP: So when I speak to kids, I speak... Okay. When I speak to grade one, two, threes, I speak on the victims and that's pretty much it. When I go and over, I do like three actors. So I'll explain the victim, the bully, and the bystander, their role. Right? And then... So I have one speech for the grade, one, two, threes, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. So four speeches to kids, they're different at different levels, but this is what I explained. I have another one for the parents, specifically for the parents, and one specifically for the teachers. And I have one now for the workplace bullying. So I have, I don't know, I lost the math, what? Six or seven. They're all on the same subject, built with the same blueprint, but the theory and the story changes to whoever's listening to me.

0:19:30.5 AP: So when I speak to parents and teachers, I kind of tell them a little bit on what they have to be doing, specifically speaking in order to take a proper step to deal with it. 'Cause we're all looking to have our kids going to school where there's no bullying. We all want that. As long as we're asking our questions. How do we stop bullying? We're gonna come up with the realization that it's still happening and we're asking ourselves the wrong question. We should ask ourselves the question, how can we minimize the damage that's done? So as a teacher, as a parent, it's very easy to find... And I don't like the word bully 'cause I don't wanna etiquette a child. Label that child a bully. Right? The child's action and the kid is two completely different identities for me. What Peter said is not necessarily, doesn't label them a bad person. So to me, I say whenever you're a parent or a teacher and you see a kid doing something that could be the defined as bullying, it's easy for them to realize it and to take that child apart and try to explain it. Teachers are a lot more... They are a lot more educated or differently educated. There's a lot more process going on in the schools than whenever I was a kid 30 years ago. Right?

0:20:50.8 VB: Totally. Totally. Yeah.

0:20:52.1 AP: Exactly, right? So I have completely... My faith is in the school's hands. To me, hearing a school doesn't do anything, is like saying the healthcare system doesn't work. It works if you really need it. So they are not doing anything 'cause you don't see whatever is in the inside. I do believe that they're really good at dealing with this. The problem is not to stop bullying, The problem is to get the victims out of the equation. 'Cause whenever I see a kid... 'Cause if I'm a wolf, do I go attack a lion or am I gonna attack a sheep? Right?

0:21:23.3 VB: Right. Right.

0:21:24.5 AP: If you can get the sheep out of the field, you're not gonna have any wolves in your backyard. If you wanna really stop bullying, I think that the process of having teachers very good at identifying and dealing with the kid that did something is good. We need to reverse the landscape and try to get victims out of the equation. If there's no victims, there's not gonna be any bullying. And there's also a process we can take to start to get that out of the equation. Does that make any sense?

0:21:54.0 AS: Right. We can't just be... Yeah. We can't just be reactive after the fact. We need to do more for the development of all kids in developing their emotions and helping them understand empathy and first learning from each others. And that's something that we talk about all the time with the disability space and how we truly get inclusive learning environments is by teaching kids very early on to look at other people like they are humans just like themselves. And that we should be celebrating their differences rather than saying that, oh, well they can't, they can't, they can't. And so therefore they're not equal to me. And I think that makes a huge impact. And just kids understanding each other and having more respect for each other.

0:22:42.0 AP: And the math on whatever you just... 'Cause you just told me you have a very young family, both of you guys, right? The math on that is, if ever I take my lifespan I have with my kids and I put it back to that. This is a math. It goes, there's a little gray area, but the math is at 12 years old you spent about 75% of your time with your kid. That means that 18 years old, you got 93% of the time you have with your kid gone. So if you wanna do some emotional education and that process, to me, the minute you become a mother or father, the clock started, you got 12 years, that's it. If you got a couple years afterwards, good for you, hat's off, I'm happy. But you got 12 years in order to set those boundaries and to educate your child, after that, their friends are gonna be the center of their universe. And if you did your job correctly as a mother or father, they'll learn to choose their friends properly and the process is gonna go smoothly. But if you weren't there, they're not gonna pick the right friends. Or we all know that one kid whenever we were kids and...

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0:23:58.5 VB: Yeah.

0:23:58.7 AS: Yeah.

0:23:58.9 AP: It doesn't... He or she doesn't... It doesn't go well with our vibrations, right? So if you... My math is 12 years, so you got quite a bit of time. Well, we say quite a bit of time. It goes by quick, but you got some time in front of you.

0:24:12.0 VB: Yeah. The days are long, but the years are quick and I've not found a better quote really to encompass the parenthood journey, Alain, my goodness. I was just kind of, I wanna be mindful of your time. How can parents or school districts administrators, how can they reach you or contact you for more information about what you do and the conferences you attend and things like that?

0:24:35.3 AP: The only way to reach me is by website and I say my name is very French, so I'll send you the link. You can have that in the comment box, it will be great.

0:24:44.4 VB: Yeah.

0:24:44.5 AP: So people can... But if you say... If you Google my name and anti-bullying conferences, you'll find me right away. My personal... I don't have a... I my cell phone, my email, I answer my cell phone, I answer my emails. I'll talk to you personally. I don't have somebody else dealing with the business. So if somebody want me to go to their schools, they can reach me at my phone number is on the website and I'll be more than privileged to take a couple of days off of my winter to go see you guys in California.

0:25:14.5 VB: Yes. Come, come, come, come. [laughter]

0:25:17.3 AS: Yes. Well, we thank you so much for being here. We're just so glad to have had you on and I'm sure our listeners are just gonna be so grateful after listening to this and hopefully if you are with a school, reach out because I think we are not doing enough to address...

0:25:34.0 VB: Exactly. Right.

0:25:34.7 AS: This topic. And I think anything we can do to... I think what you bring to the table is very different than what we see in like a lot of these assemblies. So we really encourage you guys to reach out and we just thank you so much for being here. And to our listeners, we will talk to you next week.

0:25:53.0 VB: Bye-Bye.

0:25:53.0 AP: Bye.

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