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The Make It Mindful podcast, hosted by Seth Fleischauer, explores education through the lens of mindfulness, focusing on practical, transformative solutions for teaching and learning. Each episode features conversations with educational changemakers, authors, psychologists, and leaders as Seth uncovers what they do, why it works, and how listeners can incorporate those insights into their own educational practices. By applying a mindfulness lens, the podcast encourages listeners to look objectively at what’s really going on in education, using that perspective to create positive, lasting change.
Seth Fleischauer (00:00.941)
Hello everyone and welcome to Make It Mindful, the podcast where we explore how to keep schools relevant by looking through the lens of mindfulness and asking the question, what's really worth paying attention to here? I'm your host, Seth Fleishauer, and I delve into the world of education by interviewing change makers and focusing on practical, transformative solutions for teaching. This week, my guest is Marina Baddiodias. Welcome Marina, thanks for being here.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (00:25.614)
Thank you Seth for having me.
Seth Fleischauer (00:27.693)
So we were introduced by Margot Toppin, who's also been on the podcast. She works at Alongside, which is an app that is used for to, the way I say it is to fill the gap of mental health coverage in schools. You, that is your world coming from social work within schools.
but you have a moniker as the AI social worker. I saw that on your stuff. I was hoping you could start by explaining that. What is the intersection between AI and social work and how do you find yourself with that moniker?
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (01:04.206)
Yeah, no, great, great question. Thank you for asking. So for me, you know, my background is in social work. And so I've worked primarily in education, but, you know, social work, it is a field of a practice field. Really think about
working in clinical settings, working in organizations, doing community work, but also macro work too, and policy. And so we are in all different spaces and places, social workers. And so my initial sort of thought of bringing this sort of AI social work sort of brand and concept was really bringing out this information, this.
powerful information of AI, because AI could be applied to any field, not just education, not just marketing, not just business, but even social work practice too. And so part of my mission and advocacy is really raising awareness of the ethical and responsible social work practice for social workers, which gave birth to the AI social worker.
Seth Fleischauer (01:59.789)
I see. So I can imagine that it's a lot of the same, these ethical concerns, these ethical practices, a lot of the same stuff that happens in teaching. One of the big ones would be just private information, right? Make sure that you're not putting private information in there. We don't know where it goes after that. There's also a sense of retaining skepticism, making sure that you're not just taking whatever comes out of it as gospel and rather
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (02:14.702)
Thanks.
Seth Fleischauer (02:28.205)
being skeptical, being critical about the results that you're getting. What are some of the ethical practices that apply specifically to social work?
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (02:37.678)
Yeah, so social workers were governed by our practice known as the National Association of Social Workers, the NSAW, our ethical principles. So that also includes confidentiality, that includes competency. And so when I think about being an ethical AI social worker, I think about what am I going to be using this information for? And also,
Again, like you said, the privacy and confidentiality of this information. These tools are incredible. I think they bring so much opportunities for social workers to be able to do their work more efficiently, save time, be able to be more effective in their services, whether they're in schools, or they're in community practice, or they're working in an agency doing community organizing work. But really, I think about how important it is, just like you said, you have to make sure that you are reading.
what's coming out of these AI tools. You can't just take it for face value. You have to use your practice wisdom, your clinical expertise as being a social worker to use these tools, ethically and responsibly.
Seth Fleischauer (03:41.325)
Got it. Yeah. You know, you talk about the efficiency piece and I've always described teaching as a job where you could have one student and fill up 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Right. So it's up. It's up to you to like sort of set that boundary of like, when am I going to stop working? Right. When am I not when I'm going to I'm going to stop pouring myself into the people that I work with because as people who are drawn to the profession,
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (03:46.766)
Mm -hmm.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (04:11.278)
Mm.
Seth Fleischauer (04:11.341)
to help people, it can be really hard to draw that line, right? And so when I think about all of the jobs that AI can help by making people more efficient, I think about teaching and I think about social work, these people professions, these professions where you couldn't possibly ever end your job unless you decided that you were going to stop for the day. And efficiency means that you're going to get more done. I imagine that that is
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (04:16.526)
Thank you.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (04:26.446)
Mm -hmm.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (04:33.134)
Thank you.
Yeah.
Seth Fleischauer (04:41.325)
huge in social work, especially post COVID, especially in schools where we're going through a major mental health crisis that has been brought upon by the pandemic, but also exacerbating a lot of existing issues within society. What are some examples of the ways that AI can be used within social work that align with those ethical considerations that you were talking about?
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (04:45.39)
Mm -hmm.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (04:49.166)
Mm -hmm.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (05:07.086)
Yeah, so I think there's so much practical use of using AI. I think there's a lot of administrative work that social workers have to do, just like teachers. I know teachers, you're standing in front of the classroom, but there's so much that goes behind the scenes. And same thing with social workers in school. So much happens behind the scenes before doing counseling sessions with students, both individual group sessions. I mean, we're working with everyone in the school, from the administrative team to teachers to being on the IEP meeting.
We're also supporting with student events, peer mediations. I mean, we wear many, many different hats. So I think the application for social workers to use AI in school settings really could be part of compartmentalized thinking about the administrative tasks, helping you write emails, helping you draft letters for parents.
to sort of the component of supporting with special education needs, like helping you refine IEP goals, helping you create behavioral intervention plans, to then some of the more.
Other aspects like event planning, doing campaigning. I know for me as a school social worker, I would do, you know, suicide awareness week, anti -bullying campaign. So I think there's definitely opportunities for those sort of everyday sort of school social work tasks. But then also, you know, being that thought partner with you, there's not a lot of time in the day. I know teachers struggle with planning, school social workers, we struggle with planning too. So I think AI could be a great helpful tool to, if I'm going to be doing, let's say, a social skills group.
with a group of fifth graders, I can ask, you know, chat to BT or whatever, LMM, learning large manual, sorry, the LMM. Okay, wait, can we see? We're gonna edit it out for the large language models. We don't try to say. That you could enter in a prompt to sort of be your thought partner. Like what kind of activities can I do? What discussion questions?
Seth Fleischauer (06:45.197)
large language model. Yeah, no problem. Start your thought over.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (07:01.39)
can I come up with? And I think also school social workers, we do a lot of trainings. We do a lot of group classroom activities, social -emotional learning classes. So I think there's just a huge amount of opportunity that AI can help us do our job more efficiently, effectively, help us save time, but also help us do really great quality work when a lot of times we're just bogged down with so many different, wearing many, many different hats.
Seth Fleischauer (07:26.829)
I'm particularly interested in what you were talking about with IEPs and some behavior modification plans. That requires a certain amount of student data in order to be able to create something that's going to be effective. I think it also is an example of information that the social worker must be trained up on like what it's supposed to look like so that they can be critical when they're viewing it.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (07:32.974)
Thank you.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (07:53.198)
us.
Seth Fleischauer (07:54.701)
Take us through how it would work for a social worker or even a teacher, and this podcast is for educators, to be sensitive to the need to keep things confidential while also wanting to improve efficiency and improve outcomes with your students when it comes to some of these modifications that are very personal. Take us through that. How do we do that?
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (08:03.214)
Yeah.
Yes.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (08:15.726)
Mm -hmm.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (08:21.853)
Yeah. Yeah. So, and this again comes up with that really important point of not entering in any personal information that means already identifiable information. I'm not putting in the child's name. I'm not putting in their name into the chat to BT system, whatever tool that you're going to be using. Because again, we don't own this data. It's going into the data.
portal of spaces like OpenAI. And so you really want to be mindful of that and not enter any personal information. But this is where I think you have different vantage points of how to do IEP goal writing with the help of ChatDB team. So one entry point is you actually create the IEP goal. And again, you're not going to be using the student's name, but you're going to be copying and pasting that goal that you wrote and then asking ChatDB team to refine that goal for you.
And you could use a prompt to say, can you refine this goal? Can you turn it into a SMART goal? Because sometimes a lot of feedback that we get from our SMART goals is that they're not measurable. And so that's a great way how you could use Chat2BT or School Magic AI. They also have a great tool for that too. But you want to add something, Lisa? Yeah.
Seth Fleischauer (09:31.789)
And can, yeah, yeah, can I, can I jump in for a second? When you talk about refine it, refine based on what, right? So you've written it, how, in what way might you ask the, the LLM to refine the goal?
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (09:39.406)
Yes.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (09:44.974)
Yeah, so I might say, can you turn this into a SMART goal? Can you simply say, can you rewrite this so that it's more comprehensive, more cohesive? Because again, I know time is of the essence. And especially if you're a new practitioner, this is something that you've never done before. I think IEP writing is a skill set. So again, you could ask Chachabi Tea to enhance, improve, make sure that it's measurable, a SMART goal for you to put for the IEP.
Another entry point that I see also these tools to be really helpful with is that you can ask Chachapiti, you know, I have, I'm working with a student who's in fifth grade, has difficulties managing their emotions, saying, you know, paying attention in class, has a hard time, you know, being still and, and starting their, starting their work and being a self -starter and starting their work. You can then ask Chachapiti to generate examples for you of IEP goals. So that's another way of sort of extracting that information too.
Again, not putting any student information in there, but again, you're getting ideas and using these tools as a thought partner with you in that process.
Seth Fleischauer (10:53.005)
And then at that point, it's basically up to you to know if these are good or not. Is that the idea?
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (10:58.254)
Exactly, because then it's not just like you said earlier, you can't just take it at face value. You have to read what these what these tools are generating for you. And this is where the human element is so important. You are the expert like myself as a school social worker. I have the relationship with the student. I know their history. I know their strengths. I know, you know, again, what sort of works, you know, for them. And and so this could be a way that I'm reviewing that information and then adding it as I see as a best fit for that for that student.
So there is no human replacement of AI. It's really an augmented tool that I'm working with AI to get an amazing IEP goal out of it.
Seth Fleischauer (11:37.965)
Yeah. And so is this a case where it might not even necessarily be making things more efficient, it might just be making them better or both?
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (11:45.838)
Better? Yeah, or saving time because sometimes, you know, again, if time is of the essence and you have, like I've had 25, 30 students on my IEP caseload, this can help. Right, so this is where, again, right, this is where it could really help you save time too and not only enhance, but also help you save time also. Yeah.
Seth Fleischauer (11:56.749)
I've had 25 kids with IEPs in one classroom.
Seth Fleischauer (12:09.805)
So I want to take a little bit of a step back because, you know, we referred to this mental health crisis going on in schools right now. You have this kind of front row seat to what's going on. What do you see as like the biggest issues that are facing social workers in schools today? And is it the same by age level or is it different as you go from like elementary to junior high to high school?
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (12:12.75)
Yeah.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (12:20.59)
Mm -hmm.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (12:38.926)
Mm -hmm.
Seth Fleischauer (12:39.085)
You know, I'm thinking about the like fact that we just saw that story break about, you know what, I'm gonna edit that out because this is gonna come out later. But the TikTok thing about like the kids that were, yeah, crazy. Okay, editing that out. What I asked you was, okay, what I asked you was about the like age differences and like the problems facing social work. So coming back in.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (12:45.966)
Yeah. Yeah, that's okay. Yes.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (12:59.726)
Yes.
Hmm.
Seth Fleischauer (13:03.725)
Can you elucidate that a little bit for us? Like what are some of these things as you're seeing them?
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (13:09.742)
Yeah, so I definitely think across the board, you know, I think school social workers are experiencing a number of different challenges. And I think one is certainly our role where, and I think teachers are definitely feeling this too, right? We're overworked.
burnout is definitely a challenge. And same thing for social workers also. There might only be one or two social workers for an entire school building. So you might have 800 students. I know for myself, I was working in an elementary school. I was one of two school social workers. I also worked in a middle school. There was only one of me in the middle school, grades six to eight. So I think the sheer just sort of volume and work. And again, when you mentioned increasing mental health, social, emotional concern,
if there is only one school social work for the entire school, it's just impossible to get everything that you would like to get done. And then I also think about the quality of your services as well. And so that's definitely a concern too. So I think a burnout.
of our school social workers, but I also think another challenge too is just the sheer mental health need, the social emotional needs of our students post pandemic. So there's just a social emotional relationship challenges that have come with that. I also think about too, I worked in high school settings. So I think about to that transition into adulthood being workforce readiness. I know I worked in an alternative high school setting where students, again, if you're experiencing learning loss,
You're you need to catch up on your on your credits. Are you prepared to go off to college? And I'm also concerned about that age group, because again, they're experiencing increasing mental health concerns. We know suicide rates are also high. One of the it's like the second leading cause of death for our young people. So I know there's a lot of concerns about our youth mental health. And as school social workers, we are tackling that. And I know we can't do this work alone. We have to work alongside of our
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (15:07.118)
teachers, we have to work alongside of our school administrators, our community partners, our families, because we're really in this work together. Another concern I'm also seeing across the board is gun violence and just violence in schools in general is another concern as well of our young people. We know that.
gun violence is certainly on the rise and that's created a lot of challenges across our nation. Another concern is our absenteeism. And I definitely think post pandemic that has been definitely a challenge that school refusal, not coming to school, being absent often has been a challenge for a lot of school social workers that we're trying to tackle, really building those strong partnerships.
with families, but there is an element of anxiety, depression, avoidance of not coming to school. So I think these are just some of the many of the mental health challenges that we're seeing in our school system that social workers are trying to tackle. Yeah. Yeah.
Seth Fleischauer (16:02.189)
That's a lot. So let's talk about solutions or at least ways to make things better. We've talked about using LLMs to increase efficiency, increase quality. I mean, you're talking about one social worker for three grade levels of junior high kids. Like that seems insane to me. And so anything that you can do to create greater efficiency and improve and improve your quality is going to be needed. It's probably
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (16:07.63)
Hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (16:30.702)
Mm -hmm.
Seth Fleischauer (16:31.789)
you know, 50 different solutions and you got to do 45 of them. Alongside is another app that we've mentioned that I think is a really good option for schools. You know, basically when Scott was on, he was talking about how the the the social workers at schools, they 90 % of their time is taken up by the high flyers. The rest of the students are now experiencing these mental health challenges that maybe they
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (16:35.918)
Thank you.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (16:42.798)
Okay.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (16:53.262)
So.
Seth Fleischauer (16:58.477)
didn't previously when the models were created for having one social worker for three grade levels at a school. And so the their chat bot can assess the situation with a student and then send them towards different modules, different mental health modules that can help them get through it. That seems to be like a really, really good application of technology to this problem.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (17:00.174)
in you.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (17:04.11)
Mm -hmm.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (17:16.078)
Yes.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (17:22.894)
Mm -hmm.
Seth Fleischauer (17:25.485)
and they have a little bit of AI in there, right, in the initial chat bot. Are there other, besides LLMs, besides alongside, are there other technological solutions that you know about that would potentially increase efficiency, make things better for social workers in schools?
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (17:45.454)
Yeah, so I know you mentioned alongside, and you mentioned elements as well. I know social work math, sorry, School Magic AI is a great tool as well. I know it's geared towards educators, but there's really great applications even for school social workers to use that as well. Because I also work in higher ed and I focused a lot on training, I think there's also an immense opportunity for these AI tools to also help on the training end. So I think about, I'm working with
MSW students having access to a virtual reality to do training to actually engage in therapeutic services and practices kind of role -playing scenarios is an amazing application because again as a a school social worker you are tasked boots on the ground to have to make really crucial decisions on
Again, assessment for suicide, assessment for child abuse and neglect. And the safest way to do this, especially as a new practitioner in your program, is to really train using artificial intelligence, using virtual reality. So see that as another way of really just building the capacity and training of school social workers using this technology as well alongside those great apps, like alongside. Because those, I think, again, it feels such a
a high need because again, if you're one social worker for hundreds of students in the school, you know, we know these chat bots are, you know, they've done some really great research. They're really using these chat bots to be validated to problem solve. But when they when it crosses the threshold of say a child is expressing or an adolescent is expressing suicidal ideation, the alongside team will reach out to the school, to the crisis team at the school, then to do their intervention to follow up.
Seth Fleischauer (19:28.921)
Hehehehe
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (19:32.686)
and support. So I think that's an amazing partnership as a way to sort of, I think about that MTSS model, right, of kind of tiered level support, that that's a really great tier one, you know, tier two intervention with alongside, and again, not replacing the human entirely, because especially for those crisis needs of suicide assessments and supporting students with those high level mental health needs, the human touch is going to be there, there's going to be a social worker or school counselors when you follow that student and that family.
Seth Fleischauer (20:01.517)
Yeah, yeah, such a great, such a great use of the technology. I did want to zoom in on the VR role playing that you were talking about. Do you have specific like programs or apps that you know within Oculus system or like what where can you refer people?
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (20:03.31)
Mm -hmm.
Mm. Mm.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (20:14.862)
that's, yeah. That's a great question. I know at NYU, they've been piloting a VR program. So I don't know the exact program it is, but that's something I'm going to follow back with you, Yusuf, and get that information to you.
Seth Fleischauer (20:29.101)
I'll put it in the show notes. Cool. And have you experienced this app? Have you gone in there and tried it?
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (20:35.15)
No, I haven't, but I have gotten feedback because I have a couple of colleagues who are in this work. And there's some pros and cons. I think one is the meaningful integration of this technology has to come from both, and we know this, from the administration side to the teaching side to the student side. I think from the student lens and perspective, I think it's really great that you're able to try out these different role plays. And so I've heard some really great student feedback.
through their grapevine, but then also some of those kind of technical applications. There's still some kinks to sort of work out as it is a pilot program, but there's a lot of opportunity because I think, again, thinking about the sort of ethical sort of we all need training, we all need to start somewhere, and if we're going to be working with mental health and youth, which is a vulnerable population, how can we practice in a safe way to then really support the expertise and growth, but we have to start somewhere.
Seth Fleischauer (21:28.173)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I imagine that it is an opportunity for someone to simply get the words out, right, in a way that maybe they wouldn't be able to if they were practicing in front of a mirror or with a colleague. But ultimately, you know, it's people, right? People are tricky and you can't necessarily, like, predict what any given kid is going to respond to, especially in a social work setting. I imagine that they'll get better and better at that and maybe they'll like
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (21:34.734)
Yes.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (21:40.805)
Mm -hmm.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (21:46.062)
Yes.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (21:53.326)
Yes. Yes.
Seth Fleischauer (21:57.517)
program personalities into the AI so that they can work with it that way. So like if you're working with someone who's got this profile, like this is how you might want to work with that. Has it gotten that far already?
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (22:01.358)
Yeah.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (22:07.534)
Yeah.
So it's being used in tandem.
just to kind of give a little context to, masters of social work programs, you're always doing a internship placements. You are always working, you know, client facing. It would just be an addition add on to the training. So it's not like you're solely your entire social work training career. You're just going to be using an AI virtual reality. It's really meant to be an augmented support. And I think that's kind of in the consistent theme around AI tools is that it's never to replace, but it's really to enhance work.
Seth Fleischauer (22:20.589)
Mm.
Seth Fleischauer (22:31.533)
Yeah.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (22:40.814)
you know, be a part of to partner with to be a tool in training and learning. And of course, being more efficient in services.
Seth Fleischauer (22:48.365)
Yeah. OK, so we got into what some of the technological advancements are, where we see tech really helping these issues. What about non tech solutions? Like, what are you seeing in terms of like, you know, you're a principal, right? What can you do? You're a district leader. What can you do? You're the you're the head of the Department of Education in the US. What can you do? You know what? Like, give you the reins, Marina. What would you do? Yeah.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (22:54.542)
Hmm. Hmm.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (23:03.982)
Yes.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (23:09.742)
Yes. Yep.
Yeah, so if I could just like wave a magic wand, it would be like my magical solution. So I think about this in a couple ways, and I think it's such a great question. So one, I think about increased funding.
Seth Fleischauer (23:18.861)
Yeah.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (23:25.326)
to hire more, just simply hire more social workers and school counselors. I think that's a great place to start if you can get the funding. There's grant resources out there as well. I know certainly post COVID there's Vanessa funds. So we've seen definitely a rise of actually hiring of more school social workers across the country because of this increased funding.
Seth Fleischauer (23:45.677)
Although those are expiring, I imagine a lot of, yeah.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (23:47.214)
And those were expired, yes. And so I imagine there's going to be some cuts and budget cuts too. And that's where I see another solution to that. And there's great opportunity in community partnerships. So I think this is where you could have community partnerships. And New York City has a great model where a number of New York City Department of Education school buildings have partnered with Columbia Price -Porterian or have partnered with another organization.
like Northside where there's actually schools, there's social workers on campus using insurance though that students get access to mental health services. So there's a way to actually get it in the school building. It's not coming from the principal's budget in the same way of hiring a school social worker, but it's a great partnership to have because there are community organizations out there that can come into the school building. There's grant funding and money out there as well too so that you can get more supports.
Seth Fleischauer (24:28.589)
Hmm.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (24:44.366)
coming into the school to really support that. And I wanna also say there's immense power in mental health first aid, just everyone in the school building gets trained on just the toolkit of understanding what the signs are of mental health. It just takes a village to do this work. So I see, I don't work as a silo as a school social worker, I'm working alongside the teachers. We work in tandem together, especially kind of...
Again, that sort of system where if anyone is noticing anyone is struggling, that we can communicate amongst us adult professionals to get students the help that they need.
Seth Fleischauer (25:22.541)
Yeah, it's interesting. We spoke before we started recording today about the fact that I had a decision tree in my career where I was either going to go into teaching or into social work. And I was concerned about going into social work that I would take the work home with me too much, that my heart would be too affected by my work. And then I went into like teaching New York City teaching fellows. And, you know, pretty much from like day one was expected to be somewhat of a counselor.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (25:28.11)
you
Seth Fleischauer (25:52.301)
and, you know, as a role that I, I took very seriously, especially working with certain populations, but really all populations of kids have emotional needs. And you are as, especially as an elementary school teacher, which I was, you know, you're this primary adult in their lives. Like, of course that's going to be expected of you. and it's one of like, you know, especially post COVID.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (25:52.302)
Hmm.
Seth Fleischauer (26:19.693)
like 80 things that are expected of teachers, right? So when you are talking to teachers about because you talked about mental health training for like everyone in the building, is there a sense that this is just like one more thing that they have to do? Or are people really understanding like the gravity of the moment and their role in it? Does it depend on the person like like, what's what's the response of a lot of teachers?
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (26:29.806)
Mm -hmm.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (26:47.278)
Yeah, I think it's a mix a mixture of everything and I and I say that with sincerity, you know, I I love teachers. I love working with teachers. I also acknowledge many teachers are burnt out. They need mental health themselves too. Like I don't want to negate that really important point too and especially under a lot of the stressors of testing demands and
you know, there's a lot that teachers have to go through. And so is mental health being a mental health first aid like training on the top of their lists that they have to get done when so many other competing that they need as well. And so I, that's real. I don't shame or I don't, you know, think, they don't care about kids if that's sort of their, their attitude. For me, it's about
about buy -in, I think for me it's also about, you know, where's our guiding star that we all can agree that we're here and hopefully we're all here in the best of service of youth and kids. And so this is our common ground, our common language that I'm not expecting teachers to be a social worker to do a crisis mental health, like, you know, a suicide assessment and all these things, but how can we work together in partnership because teachers really are in the front lines. You're in the classroom every day.
being with our students. And so how can we work together in partnership? And that comes with relationship building, but it's also me also giving a couple of tools on the signs, the awareness. And for the most part, I have seen teachers be receptive and open. And then there's also other conversations we had too about just teachers' wellbeing and self -care.
And it's not just on the onus of the teacher. It's really a school organization culture. And I feel strongly leadership top down that we have to make mental health a priority for everyone.
Seth Fleischauer (28:27.085)
Yeah, amen. I'm into that. I'm trying to trace back some of the mindfulness threads of our conversation. In the beginning, we were talking about a mindful adoption of technology, right? So this is not about just, my gosh, let me use this thing and not think about it. You've got to think critically. You've got to step back and look objectively. You have to be mindful of the pitfalls of the dangers of sharing confidential information.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (28:28.014)
Yeah. Yes.
Thank you.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (28:41.262)
you
Yeah.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (28:48.43)
Mm -hmm.
Seth Fleischauer (28:55.949)
But I think what we just talked about too was the idea of like being mindful of your own mental health as a way to support the mental health of the students that you work with and of just being mindful of general best practices of mental health awareness of supporting students. If you've got, you know, a few minutes and you wanted a teacher to know what some of those best practices were, how do you do it?
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (29:07.406)
Mm -hmm.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (29:15.598)
Okay.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (29:19.374)
Yeah.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (29:23.726)
No.
Seth Fleischauer (29:25.549)
Right? Like how do you support the mental health of your students when you are, you're a teacher, you're not a counselor, but you take on some of that role.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (29:34.158)
Yeah, so I mean a couple things and I always say you can't fill you can't pour from an empty cup
There's always that saying in the airplane too, right? You gotta put your mask on first before helping others. So you have to be well, right? So that's what I always emphasize is you have to be well. You have to engage in your self -care practices, whatever that looks like. And every day looks different. So what might work for you one day is not gonna work the same for you every day. And I think about, again, your support systems. How are you taking care of you? So that's one piece of it. But then also the mental health side of things, as well as a teacher. And I think about the basics of relationship
building is so powerful, right? Just getting to know your students. Humans just all want to be seen and heard. And being seen and heard from a teacher can speak volumes just from the, even sometimes nonverbal interactions that you can give with the student in the morning. Giving, you know, the morning greeting can give you a lot of information, right? As a teacher, when someone's, when someone's walking to the classroom, their disposition, how they're looking that day, if they slept, if they're hungry, like,
You've seen that all as an elementary school teacher, I'm sure, right? When they come to the classroom, you're always assessing for these pieces. But when you have that relationship building skill and you're...
you're mindfully aware of when your students are in your classroom engaging and speaking with other students, you're going to be looking for those sort of signs. Are they chronically tired? Are they chronically hungry? Are they chronically moody? Are they chronically sleeping? Are they chronically not able to pay attention? I mean, these are sort of the, and yes, these can mean many different things, but that's where that partnership comes through where, and again, I do a lot of relationship building even with teachers is some of those warning signs.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (31:19.76)
those kind of those sort of yellow red flags then hopefully we'll warn a conversation with your school counselor or school social worker to say hey I'm really concerned about so -and -so notice that they've been sleeping a lot in class I want to share that information you maybe could do a follow -up with that student maybe the school social worker already knows something is going on because sometimes that happens to you but I think that that relationship is so key and also being aware of those those mental health sort of
red flags and yellow flags and also taking care of yourself too and building relationships. I'm also a big fan of just structures and routines in your classroom. We feel so regulated as adults when we have routines and structures in our lives and it's the same thing for our little people too. So our students really do best.
Seth Fleischauer (32:00.781)
Hehehe.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (32:07.694)
when our environments are predictable, when they're safe, when there's structures, when there's routines. And so I think about mindfulness routines, social learning activity routines can be embedded into your classroom, but just again, just general sense of structure, just even the structure of the day, the schedule, going over that with students. It could be very regulating both for you as the educator, as the adult, but also for your students as well too. I know I said a lot.
Seth Fleischauer (32:34.208)
That's great. I gave you I gave you three minutes. You took three minutes. That was perfect. Yeah, I mean, I especially like in the context of this podcast, what you were talking about with noticing things. And at one point, we were defining mindfulness as the relentless pursuit of noticing. And so much of it is just, you know, taking that step back being in that present moment, being able to like, think like, yeah.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (32:36.59)
There we go. Perfect.
Mm -hmm.
Seth Fleischauer (33:00.429)
he looks hungry, you know, or like, or she she she came tired yesterday to you know, just just just those little moments of like, making sure that you're there with your students noticing what's going on and being present for them for that relationship building part of it too. There's a whole lot of mindfulness in there. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. Is there a place that you'd like to send our listeners to find your work on the internet?
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (33:15.31)
The head. The head.
was.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (33:25.934)
Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me at Marina Badio Diaz. You could search me up. You could also find me on Instagram. I'm the underscore the AI social worker. So you could find me there. And I also have a website. So my website is mabdconsulting .com. So you can find my information there. I have a free guidebook for social workers, an 83 page guidebook on prompting for
Mm -hmm.
Seth Fleischauer (33:50.605)
Mm.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (33:53.614)
social work practice. So I just want to put that little plug in there too, but I'm, I really feel constantly, sorry. AI prompting, yes, for social work practice.
Seth Fleischauer (33:57.133)
Like AI prompting? AI prompting? Got it. Cool. Cool.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (34:03.822)
And but I feel really strongly about democratizing information. That's why I love the work that you're doing, Seth. You're bringing knowledge to the people. And we should not be gatekeeping this amazing tool of AI. It really is meant to be a democratic tool for all to access. And I really feel strongly. So I'm giving out a lot of free information that you can find on my LinkedIn, Instagram, and on my website.
Seth Fleischauer (34:25.997)
Awesome. Well, I will definitely send people there in the show notes. Thank you so much again for coming on today. For our listeners, if you'd like to support the podcast, please do follow us, leave a rating, a review, tell a friend. Thank you as always to our editor, Lucas Salazar. And remember that if you'd like to bring positive change to education, we must first make it mindful. See you next time.
Marina Badillo-Diaz, She/Her (34:58.45)
Yes.