A multicultural, gender, and sexually diverse affirming consultation framework - Dr Jeffrey Brown and Starr Greensky

Welcome to the Conversations about Consultation Podcast. I'm Zara Ahmed and you're here listening to some of the conversations that myself. And my co-host, Dr. Emily Kinade, Jessica Rowley and Emily Crossby, have had with guests from around the world about consultation and psychology. We all have a keen interest in consultation and hope that this podcast offers a platform to discuss different views about the topic and future directions for consultation. We hope that you enjoy listening to these episodes and if you'd like any further information or are interested in being a guest, please feel free to let us know or get in touch by email or Twitter. On today's episode, we are so lucky to have with us Geoffrey Brown and Star Greensby. Geoffrey Brown identifies as he, him, as originally, as a Kingston Jamaica. He currently resides in San Diego and is an assistant professor at San Diego University where he teaches on the school side of the nature programme. His research interests include the effects of discriminatory systems on minoritised populations, especially those who identify as LGBTQ+ youth of colour. Geoff received his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at Yale University and his PhD in Psychology with the focus of school psychology from Tulane University where he also completed Redoc, your internship at the Wiesley and at School Psychology internship at Tokyo. He's also really lucky to have with us Star Greensby, who is also based in San Diego, California and is currently working at her school psychology intern. She is an missionary, a weekly reservation in Minnesota and Aguala-Golta from Pinewood Reservation in South Dakota. Star has a background in sociology and child development with minor in Indian American education. We really hope you enjoy listening to today's episode. Hi Geoff and Star, it's so lovely to have you both here with us. We usually start by asking our guests about their journey to where they are now, and kind of their current role and how they got here. And I was wondering if you would start by introducing yourselves and what Pete, your interest about school psychology? I'm sure thanks for having us, Zara and Emma. So, I'm Geoff, as you said, my pronouns are he/him and I was actually born and raised in Jamaica and Kingston. And I came to the US when I was 18 for university to study, well, I thought I was going to be pre-med, but psychology kind of captured my heart instead. And looking back at it, even though no one in my family studied psychology, my mom is an economist and worked for the Central Bank of Jamaica for a very long time. And I had that kind of social science background growing up in the household we would be watching the BBC and CNN and talking about social issues. And mental health is also a big interest of mine just seeing that around me. Jamaica like so many other places still very much emerging in terms of mental health care. So it was very palpable, it was all around. So I wanted to do something that would very cliche, but help those around me, help develop my own society where I grew up, but also to contribute to the mental health development of people around me. That said, I joined a psychology lab in undergrad, so I joined Dr. Paul Blooms lab doing world development in kids. So I thought I wanted to do more social developmental psychology. But then saw all the school psych students being so stressed and I was like, "Oh, I want to be stressed too, so I just go to school." I'm mostly kidding, but the long short of it, and that was that Tulane when I went to grad school as a doctor, Oscar Barbara, and his lab was that I wanted clinical skills. I wanted to work in school since I was doing my research in schools anyway. And I thought school psych would be the right for me because I wanted that application and not just that theoretical research. So that was kind of the long short of it. The rest, as they say, is history. In junior grad school, I went to Minnesota State University of Mechaedo where I was an assistant professor and their school psychology program. And then I came to San Diego State where I'm now assistant professor school psychology. And yeah, I think that's a long short of it. That's a Cliff Seltz version. But the TLDR version, the Tulane didn't read version, is that I thought I wanted to be a social psychologist who's very interested in things like a system of discrimination and prejudice. But I also wanted to not just talk about these issues. I wanted to do something about them. So that led me to school psych. Awesome. Thank you so much. And thank you both for having me here. [SPEAKING SPANISH] So hello. Again, my name is Star Green Sky. That's me speaking my native language. I'm Anishinaabe from Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota and a glau la Cota from Pioneer Reservation in South Dakota. I'm currently residing on the ancestral lands of the Kumiai people in what is now known as San Diego, California. And my journey to school psychology was really a very unexpected one. I think growing up, education was always a goal of mine and really a goal of my families. I am the first in my family to attend a four-year university to graduate high school and then to graduate with a bachelor's. So I remember being in my undergrad and at the time I was studying sociology and child development and I was minoring in American Indian education. And I was really loving what I was doing. I was loving working with families and students in youth. And I remember I had a professor, who was kind of a mentor, her name is Dr. Keishan Lara Cooper. She's a wonderful, indigenous woman, just very bright and just so powerful. And I remember she had approached me one day and I'd asked me if I was thinking about grad school. And I just kind of gave her a funny look and I was like, what do you mean? I got here. This was it for me. I'm super excited and just blessed to be here. But the more that she kind of pushed me and asked me some questions, what is it that you would like to do? What issues are you seeing? How would you like to go back to your community? I started thinking more and more critically about the issues that were coming up in my community as an indigenous woman, the things that I cared about and how to kind of push forward. And so school psychology has really given me that opportunity to give back to my community and contribute in a meaningful way. So thank you for having me. That's amazing. It's so lovely to kind of hear such varied backgrounds and like the different cultures that are coming into like play. And I guess I'm also wondering, you know, Jeff, he spoke a little bit about an interest in mental health and I'm just how I'm supporting communities and I'm wondering what role consultation plays in that really. So that's a really good question. I would say that it plays a pretty big role. So in a couple of different ways. So like one is maybe more metaphorically, right? So and I will say that I was trained in consultation at Tulane by Bonnay and Stacey, who you know was one of the consultation, consultation answer thing. And you know, more, I was trained by her more formally, but also kind of more informally, right? In a way that I didn't really know that was going on. So, you know, every time a friend talked about a case that they were, you know, having and, you know, we problem-soft together even as a grad student, you know, that was consultation and we didn't really call it that, but between classes or what, what have you or between your after-practice, and, you know, classmate would be talking about a case. You know, and this is a New Orleans where I did graduate school. And it was a place where, you know, some places relied on students or inter-enter what have you for, you know, mental health support. And so this would be legit, right? Like these little side conversations, they really had some sort of impact. But that was consultation. We didn't really know what we were doing at the time. But also, you know, when we're talking about our own mental health, right? Like it starts from ourselves and how we were managing grad school or how we were managing things going on at home or things going on with our families or with our loved ones or what have you, whether we're talking to each other or we're talking to our professors or whether we're talking to our mentors. That was like a form of consultation, right? So even though we were trying to, we were trying to recognize consultation, you know, capital C consultation as, you know, you talk to the consult, you talk to the consultee or you talk to the client or it's client centered as consultee centered or what have you. Like there was, even though we were trying to like label it in such a way, like we'd notice that over time of these little things to concession. So I mentioned all that to say that right now my role is, if more formally, I'm helping a school. I don't say the name of the school, but they're an international school in Germany that I'm helping with more systems based consultation and I've been working with them over the past year. I won't take too much credit for it because I will say that one of their teachers has been working tirelessly. So they would be the consultee in this, in this case, I'm not sure. maybe the consultant, but this teacher has been working tirelessly to do survey about discrimination, especially racial race-based discrimination, race-ethnic-based discrimination, religion-based discrimination, and sexual orientation, gender-based discrimination in their school. The first step of that is to do a school-wide survey. The first of its kind to figure out the various levels of discrimination that was going on to be reformed some of their systems. So maybe they could improve their system school-wide to make it more supportive for students or from minorized backgrounds. But it's pretty major in that the administration has no sort of schema for it, right? So like, I would necessarily pretend that a lot of places here are perfect. Here in the States we're definitely far from it. But at least there is language and the census about like what is your race, what is your gender, what is your race? It was not very common in that state where they are to have that kind of language. So very much the mere asking about these identities, these categories, to some people that was a discrimination. Does that make sense? It's playing a pretty major role right now in recognizing some of the more classical versions of it, like how do you get someone to look at the system that they're in to transform it? But also it's a pretty major in a very informal way. So like, I feel like every any time I talk to a student about what's going on in their own life, right? So it's now on the other side of it, right? Like I'm talking to a student, well what's going on with their own personal life, with their families, with their loved ones, with their friends right now, and every time I talk to my other faculty members about how we can better support students, but any time I talk to a student about how we can better support them. So I feel like it's both informally and informally in a lot of different ways. I really want to echo what Jeff was saying as far as consultation really happening on both like a formal and informal basis. I think a lot of my formal training, being a school psychology intern now, it started in the program, I guess you could say, right, formally. I got to work with Dr. Colette Ingram, who is one of the great pioneers in this field, and very honored and blessed to have been able to work with her. But I also think I want to echo what Jeff was saying as far as consultation really starting with ourselves, right? And kind of understanding who we are as practicing school psychologists, right? Our own positionality in different social structures and things like that. So although formally, I think it started in my graduate program learning about the different consultation models and everything like that, I think informally, this training has really started since being a student myself in the public education system, and understanding my own experiences as an indigenous student and as an indigenous woman. I think now being placed as a school psychology intern at a middle school high school site, I am working in a school district that's in more of kind of a rural area, but they have a very high culturally and linguistically diverse student population and also a very high indigenous student population. So a lot of my role now is not only kind of understanding my own position as now being on the other side, if I'm no longer just a student, right? I'm practicing, I'm in the field, but also understanding my position in really being an advocate and what that means and what that looks like as a consultant, right? So working with indigenous students, working with culturally and linguistically diverse students, working with the families, kind of building that trust with the local community, I think has been so extremely important to my work. That's been I think the breadth of the work is building that trust in the community, right? And then also trying to bridge the relationship, I think, between the students and the families that I work with, then also the public education system as a whole. So a lot of the staff that I work with and the educators and the administrators, so trying to bridge those two entities, I think, is kind of what consultation has been all about for me. I think it also has been such a great experience to really explore how to use my experience as an indigenous woman, but also the knowledge that I have, right? A lot of the historical kind of context that I'm aware of, that I know about to really inform these interactions as well. Yeah, that's a little bit about how I think consultation plays really just a huge role in the work that I'm doing with the students and families. And if I may kind of just add onto the star, I will say that myself and the other fellow faculty is something that we try to convince our students, so, you know, star in her colleagues, her fellow students. Over the years is that you have so much inherent knowledge, like you have expertise, like it's not only about kind of like the book learning that will be important to you, it's not about how many tests you know how to do, right? Like each of you have, each of you brings these unique set of experiences. And so I'm really glad, star that you mentioned that and that, you own that, right? And that is, it's really, really, it's really, really important in terms of like advocating for students and families. It's so interesting. I guess when you were talking star, one of the things that struck me was that thing about your own self-awareness and self-knowledge and how you know and understand yourself in a wider system. And how, how critical that is to be able to look both inward and outward, how can I bring myself into the work? And how can I know and understand myself well enough that actually I accepted, I'm flawed and have blind spots or biases or stereotypes or whatever it might be. And how do I do the both end? I felt was, you know, really coming through in what you were speaking to. I think the other thing that the both of you have really kind of walked back to me is that Kaplan's idea about interpenetrating frames of reference. There's maybe less point in just seeing consultation as being very traditional client centered with that really trying to think about what systems are clients, consultees, consultants, et cetera, in. And the idea that each of the, like, how we feel internally has an influence on our relationships with others, those relationships have influences on groups. That group has an influence on the wider kind of community or a structure within a school or assessing. And actually, again, I suppose it's the complexity of what we're asking of ourselves and, I guess, of consultees to engage in consultation is, you know, if it's done well and done portfully, it can be such a powerful tool for really trying to understand what really is kind of going on or how might we be able to affect change? It was, yeah, just lots of really interesting things kind of sporking off. And I don't know about that. Yeah, what we would call like a self-awareness and critical kind of placing of oneself and role. If what Jeff and Starr have been speaking to kind of resonates for you on any level. Yeah, definitely. I think as you were both speaking, I was like, oh, Emma told us in first year self-enroll. But yeah, I think it is really important to have that self-reflection and M.O. what you were saying, you know, going into consultation. I guess knowing that, you know, we're not perfect. And I think that's actually really helpful for consultation in terms of, I know that I'm coming in with specific knowledge and expertise, but there's also lots of things I don't know. And the consultee is there to share that experience with us rather than me coming in and being like, this is what you do. I guess, you know, today we want to talk a little bit about Jeff, the paper you wrote recently in 2022. And that was kind of our first encounter with your work. And it was on a multicultural gender and sexually diverse, a framing school-based consultation framework. But really interesting paper. And we would just love if you could give us some background and kind of context on this work, like some of what you notice and what prompted kind of that thinking and some of the concerns you were conscious of in the systems and, yeah, schools you were working with. - Of course, thank you. So the paper came out officially in 2022. By the idea for it came around 2018, 2019, actually. And I do want to mention my colleagues and my co-authors, Shrine Nasser, at Cleveland State University, Charity Brown Griffin, Winston-State, University, North Carolina, Sally Grape, at Montclair State University and Sherry Proctor at CUNY at Queens College, at City University, New York. So I do want to first and foremost, amend to them because without them, the paper just would not exist at all. And these are longtime collaborators. And also when I look up to all of them as mentors, I mean, not only academically, but just generally more senior to me in terms of their, in terms of their level of scholarship, their level of intellectual thinking. And so I do want to kind of highlight them for us in foremost, especially Sherry Proctor who is such an important figure in school psychology and I mean, I encourage everyone to go forth and to read all of your Proctorous papers. She's much work not only in terms of, you know, studying the well-being of black students. For example, she's also done a lot of work studying our own field in school psychology and shining a light on school psychology. So I do want to do want to highlight that for a second. I also want to highlight, as as Star mentioned earlier, Dr. Collett Ingram, right, who is maybe in this particular way, maybe a spiritual predecessor to me. I read her 2,000 paper on multicultural consultation and I thought, well, you know, this is, this is amazing and actually inspired me to, I would say it kept me going in terms of like my scholarship, right? So I read her 2,000 paper and I just thought, wow, like this is, this is really incredible idea. As a school psychologist, you can also think about new ways to kind of approach the field and think about new things like inequality, the tackle things like racial prejudice and all the other kind of inequities that we kind of face. I do want to highlight that. But I will say that when I was thinking about that framework, I said, well, you know, this is so amazing and it's been about 20 years since that came out and always has our world change, right? One of the ways in which the world has changed is that there is much more acknowledgement of folks who are gender diverse or diverse in terms of their gender identity as sexual orientation. So, you know, we used GSD gender sexually diverse language in the paper. I will not take credit for that name. I will, the editors of the paper suggested that name as being more inclusive. So and I'm very, very happy that they did. So originally, we had the the the title of the paper was a multicultural LGBTQIA, LGBTQ+ affirming school-based competition framework, which is the term that maybe most people are more familiar with, but they said gender sexually diverse is more inclusive, right? It kind of leaves the door open to more identities. And so I thought, well, let's take Collette's 2000 framework and what if we integrated stuff that is more in touch with gender sexual orientation intersectionally, right? So like what if we talk about intersectional support of consultee learning and development instead of just learning and development, right? Which is the original language that Collette used or what if we talk about not only understanding of saliency of race and ethnicity is as Collette originally phrased it, but what if we talk about understanding of citizenship race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity? So I'm also talking about the interaction there of all these different identities, right? So essentially, the long story short version is that, you know, we should not only start start with understanding our own culture and start mentioned that earlier, right? That's where it all begins. And then understanding the impact of racism, right? On the students who work with, on the systems who work with, but we should also have, you know, heterosexuals and sexism in the mix like, how have these systems of discrimination, those systems and discrimination that target gender and sexuality? What's the impact of that? Right? So in maybe the original consultation framework, understanding the impact of race systems would maybe look at, you know, what are our expectations? How are expectations of students different based on what race or ethnicity they are? What assumptions do we have based on their race or ethnicity? And, you know, gender sexual orientation piece is slightly different. It's not exactly the same because often those identities can be invisible, right? You know, we don't know if someone is questioning their gender identity. We don't know if someone is questioning their sexual orientation or keeping that secret and so on so forth or chooses not to reveal to anyone, right? But we shouldn't go in assuming that their identities are the identities that we are a most most comfortable with or be that society says we should expect, right? And even if they do let us know, we shouldn't assume that, you know, their expression is within a specific way or within a specific frame, right? So it starts out with these assumptions, but it is something that we should constantly be aware of. Even if everyone involved, I don't and heterosexual, right? cisgender and heterosexual, even if everyone involved, I'll identify as such within the consul, consultant, consultant, consultee kind of triangle. It doesn't matter because, you know, our own assumptions, like we should question our assumptions regardless, right? We should not act as if they are, you know, willing and, you know, proper participants in this system, this sort of heterosexual system that we set up with everyone can benefit from questioning the heterosexual norm, for example, right? And also, we should, it also starts with how we have either benefited or how we have supported that heterosexual sexist, cis-sexist racist norm, right? So it's kind of, it's, it works similar to the original model in that it starts with a questioning, right? And it ends with affirmation and affirmation of multiple viewpoints and questioning really the power structures that we have set up. It starts, it starts with, you're yourself and ends with questioning that assumption, but it's different in that, you know, it's not that like we should only apply this model when we suspect that they're, you know, that the client in question is, for example, identifies as trans or identifies as bisexual. What have you, right? Like it, it applies regardless. And now that I'm kind of like talking about it, I think that the original model kind of works the same way. I mean, if you have apparent cultural similarities or I would say superficial cultural similarities, like you should still question your own, you know, your own assumption. That's right, you're about how the other person that calls the consultee, client, how they have, how they're expressing their culture, how they are bonding with their culture, you know, I'll be a little bit more specific, you know, I would say that if someone were to approach me with maybe like a median or mean level of schema of like how you should approach a Jamaican person, like they would be, they would get something that's pretty dead on and they would get some things like very, very, very incorrect, right? And, you know, so I think that, I think that, like, I think that works with all of us. Yeah, I love it really follows that idea of, of not knowing about everything. And I wonder whether they're actually perversely could be something really freeing. If we could really embrace the idea of, well, if we all look substantially the same, so it's probably this and it's probably if the benefit of that framework, Jeff, in terms of saying, actually, it doesn't matter, you constantly enter into a spirit of, well, it might not be. It might not be. Yeah. And because I think the other thing that, you know, young people, particularly now, I think they're so amazing at pushing back on the restrictions around fixedness, you know, and I suppose I do, well, my kind of clinical work more with adolescents and young adults and really recognizing how the capacity to be able to flex and kind of embrace some aspect of oneself. And then six months later, be like, well, that's not, you know, it, that developmental, um, typicality and allowing for that. I think there's something really amazing about the framework in, like from the very get go being able to be, actually, I don't know anything about these people. And I want to find out more. And it's, it's not so, it's not so basic, but it's so, um, it's, it's important, right? Yeah, absolutely. Um, I, you know, you see, use the word freeing. And I will say that, like, you know, I'm, I'm a, identify as a, a queer person, a gay man. And so, you know, I talk a lot. And maybe again, we're in an informal way, right? About how, like, queerness is about liberation in a lot of ways, right? Like, it is liberation from, um, expecting a certain script in terms of gender norms in terms of, uh, norms of sexual orientation. It is very freeing. It's like you get to sort of make up your own rules to a certain extent. Of course, you know, there is, there's, there's still, we're still human. So there's still conformity and, and all this, but there is, there is liberation in a individual way. So like, what if we kind of look at this liberation from more response? more systemic lens. I do want to ask a star if I may take over interview or roll for like a second, right? Because stars actually trained by a club and others, club and colleagues. So she was, you know, I dare say star, you're maybe more trained in this kind of approach, at least more similar to this approach than I was. So I don't know, could you talk about how any of these kind of steps, how they look in practice, you know, especially as, especially as a trainee? Yeah, definitely. I appreciate your work so much, Jeff. I love reading your article and it really speaks to you. I think what we do every day in the field, right? And it's so funny to hear you talk about it because you keep saying it's so basic and I don't think it's basic at all. I think it really is, it needs to be said, right? And although, you know, even the notion of just challenging these systems, even though it's kind of like a, we, that's where we should start. That's a great starting point. It also needs to be said. It needs to be talked about. It needs to be practice on a regular basis. I think it also really speaks to the collaborative nature, right? You talked a lot about like liberation. And I think when we are thinking about consultation and kind of the collaborative problem solving that we go through with the consultee, that also brings opportunities for liberation, right? In that we're doing this together, right? We're challenging our own, maybe assumptions that we have about gender and sexuality and identity. And also doing that with the consultee at the same time. So I think that that's such a big part of what we do as consultants. And I think it happens every time we're, we're meeting even informally with teachers and educators and administrators. I think that starts ultimately with us, right? As we had kind of previously spoken about, but really just challenging the system that we work in. And then also really thinking about how that's reflective of the larger system that we're all kind of a part of, right? How these schools are essentially just microcosms of the larger system and how we can start that. I mean, it was something that you were touching on Jeff about the sort of, what Collette wrote about in 2000. And there's a part in your paper where you're talking about the need to really think about gender and sexuality diverse identity specifically, rather than just sort of using the default kind of idea of cultural competence. And kind of alongside that emphasis that, you know, the view and the people that you wrote the paper with about working at different levels, that it isn't just about working with an individual child or young person in their context, it's also about the kind of wider structure and system. And one example of a system level response you gave was exactly that, but not just saying, you know, there's a professional competency in working in a culture responsive way, but that you really do need to kind of address specifically something about the distinctive nature of each person and who they fully are. And yeah, we just thought that was such an interesting point about competencies, generally, and thinking about either pre-trained, you know, like in initial training, Zara's nearly qualified kind of competencies that you would develop across your career. We're just wondering if both of you would speak a little bit to this idea that any one aspect of identity, whether that's, you know, race, ethnicity, language, you know, is could be subsumed into this idea of cultural competence and what one get missed. Right. So, I will say that, you know, cultural competency is, I feel like we've tried to, we've tried to like should that term and like adopt others, but it sticks, right? Like it sticks for a reason just because it is so all encompassing in LA. When we think of cultural competency or like, you know, when I say, when I was training, which again wasn't that long ago, it was defined in a fairly, it's not even that it was a defined, defined in a strict way. Like, it's not only, it's not that they train us to say cultural competencies only about race or ethnicity or cultural competencies only about challenging racism, right? Like, especially as it exists in the US context, but it wasn't explicitly said, but it was sort of like implicitly, like, well, that was implicit message just because race and ethnicity is such a salient part of US culture. So, it was sort of implicitly about that, right? And there was sort of lip service being given to, well, yeah, you know, here's the things, right, like language and a sexuality and so on and so forth. So, I think that really integrating these other parts, right? These other identities and these other accesses identity to the forefront of cultural competency is not necessarily saying that, okay, racism is like less important or race or ethnicity is less important on the contrary, like, these other identities really intersect with race in a very important way, right? And we shouldn't give that short-thrift, right? And again, it comes down to what you said about this overall question about like, how does this person express their race, ethnicity and sexual identity? How do these various aspects intersect in a way, right? Let's start from a place of not knowing, and let's start from a place of not assuming, and let's start from a place of like reflecting on our own experiences, right? So, you know, I can think of clients I've worked with who ostensibly have the same kind of salient racial identities, but who express it in such different, different ways, right? Vassy differently. So, that's kind of a start of like how I think about cultural competency in this kind of way. And I don't know, I feel like it's not to put you on blastar, but I can think of so many times that you and your colleagues, your classmates, you've had cases in practice come or an internship that also ring true to this. I don't know if you have any come to mind or if you speak to that. Yeah, definitely. And it's okay, put me on blast. Yeah, I will say I think I really appreciate kind of Jeff's emphasis on intersectionality, right? And I think that there is kind of this shift in education where although there is like a lot of importance in developing, you know, cultural competencies and what does that look like and culturally responsive teaching and, you know, in education, I feel like you have one professional development day, maybe once a semester where you cover some cultural competencies and then you walk away from the training and you're like, I feel culturally competent, right? But what does that really look like in practice, right? How are you integrating that into not only your everyday interactions with students and families and educators, but also in your everyday life? Like I used to joke with a lot of my cohort members or my colleagues, my classmates and I remember we had talked about, you know, how we had gotten to grad school and we had asked each other, you know, was this your dream job? Was this your dream job? And one of my colleagues had said, you know, I don't really like think of school psychology as a dream job or like a dream career, right? This is really just like a dream community role. Like this is how I see my life evolving and this is the values that I have in my life, I want to also integrate into my practice, right? And I think that really speaks to also this idea of expanding cultural competencies to be a lot more holistic. Like a lot of us are not just the three or four salient identities that, you know, someone sees in us when we show up into a classroom or when we walk into a room, right? The kind of like three or four most salient identities, a lot of us have just varied experiences. So for example, I work a lot, right, with Indigenous students and families and there are so many kind of diverse experiences just within a lot of Indigenous communities and cultures. Due to, you know, historical contacts, colonization, all of these different factors and working with one Indigenous student, it's going to look very, very different from working with another Indigenous student and family. I have some students who have a breadth of cultural knowledge and know about their traditional languages and their traditional cultural practices and everything. And so a lot of our work together is making them feel empowered to express themselves in that way and also advocating for that in the classroom and in the school system. I work with some Indigenous students who because of colonization and because of certain historical impacts of, you know, American legislation and things like that, there are a lot more disconnected, right? There has been just such a long history, I think, of really horrible things that have happened to not just Indigenous communities, but I think a lot of other marginalized communities. And so, you know, working with one student who may have these experiences because of these identities, I think just looks so different than the next student, right? And I think that that's what Jeff is really speaking to is thinking about this intersectionality. I'm thinking about, you know, how we work with our students in a more holistic way, which I really appreciate. you know, there's no sort of on-size fits all when it comes to that. And it is actually very attractive to, like into the general sort of school-site population to be like, "What's the intervention I could do for ex-population?" Right? You know, instead of that, think about like, how can I change my approach and my thinking to better serve a variety of students or families who may be diverse in terms of their race ethnicity or a student who, you know, may identify as, you know, not heterosexual, or may identify as queer, or may identify as trans, what have you, right? In what ways can I change my thinking and my approach? In what ways is my sort of approach not conducive to identities that fall outside the dominant or the mainstream? But I will say that that initial part, right? It's very clean. That's why it's so attractive, right? It's because it's you can do an hour of training and then you say you're qualified. It's so seductive, I would say, is right. Right. Right. And that kind of stuff, you know, it sounds good to funders, you know, which as we know, all of us on this call, you know, make the world around in a way, right? It's very, it's very attractive. It's the establishment, right? But I'm really trying to push up against that as much as I can. I love that there's the same sense, Jeff, there of kind of the spirit of not knowing. And like you couldn't possibly like start saying having one profession development event and then be like, I am the most culturally competent person that has ever existed. Done. Let me move on to reading. You know, it, you are emphasizing this continual need and lifelong idea, but we will never know. And therefore we need to keep inquiring, which is one of the brilliant parts about this, this job and being able to continue to do that as. But in the other bit about not knowing like almost that menu option, if I have X child or X young person, what's the intervention and like I'll select it out of a menu? We've literally just recorded an episode with somebody who is really interested in service user involvement and consultation, particularly had you better include children and young people in consultation. And what you've just said kind of links for me a little bit about what, what Ann was talking about, which is we don't know what would be a good intervention for a gay black student. So why don't we ask them? Why don't we have them and say that we genuinely don't know, but we'd love to hear what you would, I mean, she's some of the examples she was just giving about what gets missed when young people aren't included in consultation. I don't know, you know, Zora, she was giving an example about like changing for PE and absolutely hasting getting changed for PE and the one thing that would have made such a big difference about experiences of feeling like they belonged and that they could be included was if that part could be addressed, but none of the adults, the consultees or consultants have really considered what would, what would be something, I'm not saying in any way, like that's the answer to everything, but the, the real importance of remembering we don't know about clients and the significance or consultees and the significance of asking. I think really kind of comes through in both of those points that you're making. 100% 100%. It's, it's just not knowing and, you know, flus for us were much more brilliant than I am, have kind of maybe stated it more. So simply or eloquently than I, than I ever could, but that's definitely the kind of spirit that I constantly take. I'm not this, this spirit of not knowing and I will say to your point about, you know, asking the students what they want or asking the students, what they need to know, the speaking to this very kind of participatory kind of framework, right? You know, I see it. I wish I could, I wish I had their permission to say that to say it was just because they do it so brilliantly. But these, the school I'm working with in Germany, this teacher who was championing this, the systems based project, essentially. He's been such an expert. His approach, but really, really genuinely trusting the students as experts and really facilitating that. I would say that as I mean, again, I'm learning, I'm learning. I'm like, oh, wow, this is, this is truly participatory work. Yeah, I think that also kind of speaks to a little bit of what the star was saying in terms of like that holistic kind of approach and really. I guess working with what works for that young person because no two young people are going to be the same, no matter whether they identify with the same gender or sexuality or race and. Yeah, it's quite interesting because as you guys were talking, I was really stuck on the word of like cultural competence. And that competence kind of feels like there's somewhere to reach and now you're competent. My, yeah, I've been thinking about that a lot, but I guess in some of the new competencies that we have in the doctoral training that's one of them. And I guess it says like we would have demonstrate knowledge and understanding of characteristics such as race, religion or belief, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, social class and their intersection. And kind of that's a relevant practice and the concept of intersectionality is really prominent in your framework, but equally sometimes it can be less well understood. And I was just wondering if we could maybe expand a little bit about, you know, how aspects of intersectionality are attended to in the framework. So yeah, that's a great question. And I will, you know, point to. Kimberly Crenshaw, her 1989 right paper on intersectionality as. The, the, the coin are the terms, the origin of the term intersectionality. Again, such a when you read the concept, you're like, of course, but then, you know, you also realize that that's not necessarily the default kind of way of approaching things, right. So specifically in this framework, it just, I mean, there isn't much difference than how the original term was intended, right. So essentially, we look at, say, for example, someone's race or ethnicity and how, how that, yeah, how that basically intersects with other aspects of their identities. So for example, a student who identifies as as cisgender of a cisgender of black, right. And female. She may be facing issues due to how she is perceived as as a black, as a black girl as a black youth. That made differ fundamentally, both within her community and outside her. Racial ethnic community. I can think of a student who I worked with who is black and they were gender not conforming at the time. And both of their teachers, if not all of their teachers, were white, cisgender, they may not, the teachers might not might see this student's behavior going out in, we were in New Orleans at the time. Right. So they may see this student going out with their friends at night and certain parts of New Orleans as, you know, quote unquote, deviant behavior, quote unquote, you know, part of their consolation of their. Of their kind of emotional behavioral diagnoses, they might view it through that light. Oh, they're, they're sticking out that's curfew or they're being maybe some, you know, quote unquote, naughty or bad or what, what have you. You know, again, I want to clarify that, you know, these teachers and these, these staff members, they may have ultimately very positive perceptions of the student and, you know, you know, want the student to be great and some of the teachers may even. Love the student in a way, you know, kind of like a full parental kind of role and may have taken on that role and I will emphasize that they may think nothing but great things about the student, but they may view the student's behavior through a frame of they're doing something kind of bad versus they are seeking out other people of their own of their own identity or there are firm in their own identity, essentially. Right by going out and dressing up and listening to music and so on and so forth like they might view that less as a affirmation and more as a behavioral difficulty, even though, again, ultimately they may still be doing really, really good things for this student right. So in that case right the teacher would need to or the staff members not only teachers kind of want to kind of pinpoint on teachers not only teachers admin staff members school psychologists i'm using teacher to kind of like as a catch all right adults. They they should in that situation or they may they may want to in that situation. Question their own biases question their own cultural frame which says that you know students should not be going out and and dressing up and doing all these things right and again you know maybe maybe they shouldn't from a safety perspective, but again it's coming it's a behavior that's coming up from a need right so it's about identifying a students need. To seek affirmation right because they don't have that by default right they've like no there's no one in their immediate immediate environment i'm doing that so again, you know if you if they just view the student as. They are a black student or they are a queer students they may miss some of that nuance because sometimes some of those adults or staff members would have you. Their default of gay or queer might be a very sort of stereotypically white idea that they see on TV, right, or that they see in Hollywood. Or their idea of black might be again a very kind of monolithic, flat idea of like, this is where this is where black people go to feel affirmed they go to church or they this is where this is what they do this is what they do they may have like a very like set idea of what it is versus like flexibly thinking like, okay, because of these students identity is they seek affirmation in this place. The thing is that like another student of their own another black queer student might be seeking affirmation, you know, on the internet, right, and that the error that I'm thinking of that that's that's not that that's black queer student might be looking on Tumblr right or reformation right or so does that makes sense it's sort of like kind of that flexibility and that kind of fundamentally questioning of assumptions. Yeah, I mean, I know we don't have the time to but one of the things I suppose I suppose someone you're talking about kind of colonialism and what that has done in the States and kind of I'm also thinking about how faith and how challenging I guess personally I can find faith, you know, based on where I'm from and how I've grown up because I you know, Jeffy touched on the word about morality and how people can say about expressing care in many ways and and very altruistic ways and in very intended to be mindful ways but are experienced as policing somebody's attempts at seeking community or, you know, exploring who they are really really interested but I guess I was also thinking about how colonized when one's mind can become and that inability to question why am I thinking this is problematic or an issue or framing it as a deficit behavior or something to do with an emotional disturb what where's all that come from. And again, the significance of the framework starting with some sort of interrogation of your own as the consultant why have I decided that the default rice or norm or whatever kind of language you might use that's the kind of way and then anything else that's different to somehow deviate in whether that's in a neutral way or or potentially in quite a negative way. But it is also making me think about how do we keep that capacity to not know particularly as you transition from internship to newly qualified from newly qualified early career and as you go on and how do you not lose the capacity to sort of wonder. Because one of the things I guess to try and link those two things together and start to ask you about this specifically in some of the papers that we see in I'm assuming what you would read in your your graduate studies or in your internship is around my normalcy stress frameworks. I know that is mentioned in the paper that Jeff wrote with his colleagues, but I think that some of what's attended to in that idea is we might talk about how power is operating in people's lives and maybe I'd be more used to kind of but I guess what I was wondering about you know the importance of taking account the wider system around a child young person rather than just locating a difficulty within them. And how we try to understand that actually this isn't necessarily about deficits or DV and C or dip you know in that kind of way and not to say locate a mental health need in an individual when actually the systems around them are quite toxic. And yeah I was just wondering about is that how have I understood my nor is he stress framework in a sort of similar way where they're bits missing in that and how important is that kind of framework in some of the consultation that you're doing currently in your internship. Yeah no I think that is such an important question and I think you're touching on so many so many important points when it comes to the realities of the students that we work with right I think such a big piece of that as well that I've experienced in my internship has been. How colonization has impacted students and their families and their own ideas about their identities right so I like to think of like in my community traditionally as an indigenous woman my tribes. And I think it was this kind of belief that gender was a very fluid idea and a fluid concept and a lot of the time there were these traditional terms pre colonization that we would use to describe certain members of our community to where it wasn't just man and woman but there were you know two spirited individuals as well. And I think that I really acknowledged and valued and I think you know after colonization and kind of the period where in now and a lot of my students there has been. I think this interesting transition of like growing up on the reservation and growing up with kind of these. And then to these new values right are coming to school off of the reservation and really experiencing this is reflective of the dominant culture right which is not which is not reflective of how they grew up or what's traditional to their own you know cultural ideas and beliefs. And I think that's also been interesting as well right where it's not so much the student is has these deficits or the student is deviant but as you were mentioning it really is about the larger system right it really is about the school system and how to further work with the system I think that's our job is consultant right is really trying to make those adjustments and. And bring up these conversations and challenges assumptions for sure what you just said was really interesting and I guess when I was thinking of you know the different context you go into when you come from you know different community and then you go into school community is slightly different and kind of that. I guess cognitive dissonance in a way and but also the impact that has on young people forming their identities and that kind of. It's an interesting point that I just thought that it really impacts young people and their kind of sense of who am I and how am I becoming who I am and but yes I guess we don't have a lot of time and so we'd like to come a little bit to the consultation framework itself and kind of the five domains. Maybe I won't list them all out and it would be really lovely to kind of hear a little bit just about the framework and it's use at the moment. Right so the long and long short of it is again this is mirrors in Grim's 2000 framework very closely right but it's modified as I say in the paper. It's slightly modified framework to include gender sexual sexual diverse populations or considerations right and I like that. You mentioned earlier power like talking about power because power is definitely inherent within this as well right it's less about. We're all standing from like an equal foot and more about like okay it won't ways to do the power structures that we exist in a society tilted like so there are five domains as Zara mentioned. The first is thinking about the consultants thinking about your own learning and development so like what knowledge do you have of issues affected gender and sexual diverse populations right so that is like what do you know about the current legislation right in the US and in other countries as well actually. That are the pushback against the freedom of liberation of LGBTQ or or GSD individuals right how does that disproportionately affect GSD as people of color students of color right how does the very not only laws and not only policies but how does the rhetoric. How is that affecting students or these families and on the opposite hand what supports are available like what what are kind of like aspects of the community that makes them. Built to really withstand these kinds of attacks and what are the aspects of this community that that have enabled them to to develop such resiliency over the centuries right that have made them able to withstand this prejudice discrimination over time like why is it such as why is this social strong awesome amazing community or set of communities right across across race or ethnicities and how does that. Look different in different societies and different cultures and how how does that look essentially so it's really about it's really about educating ourselves right first and not only that not only like you know what can we read for the books but like how does our own background and our own culture how does that affect our perceptions right this and stuff like that some of that you can learn from people right you can learn by getting to know people. Not only people you you know have to work with but also people in your community right I mean in the US even in even in small towns there are there are LGBTQ centers. And again there's some reason to be available online that's the first thing the section it's supporting consultee learning and development so who you're working with and how could you help them to learn more about whatever whatever it is if it's it's meaning them where they're at in terms of their own knowledge and their own culture competency their own issues and not pretending to be better a quote a quote better cultural competence you would have you but really just like seeing. your differences and kind of meeting halfway and kind of as Daris said earlier, kind of bridging that divide. For them to move on to how does cultural similarities between different stakeholders, how does that interact within a school system, which is also a cultural system. So how does your own cultures, how does that intersect with the school culture and how does the school culture develop, right historically and how is that influenced by our society. So the third domain really looks, really situates a school as a system than wider set of systems. Again, it goes back to your abroad from Brenner, who I beat my students over the head with in the first year class I teach there. And then the fourth domain kind of goes to variation. So that's what I mentioned earlier about, okay, there are many different also we have both within person variations and between person variations, right. So for example, as I said, no two people who identify as the same thing identities, no two people are the same. So that interpersonal variation, but also, you know, it could be I'm a sister, black mixed race immigrant, you know, male school psychologist who may be working with someone with like, you know, assortment of identities for different or the same. And the client might also be an assortment of identities that are different the same. So like there's so many different ways that are there are so many different combinations. And so how does this unique combination is really a play out how do is how do our how does this dynamic play out partially because of are kind of like different dynamics in terms of in terms of orientations and in terms of cultural identities, but also despite that, right. Like what similarities do we have what cultures do we share. And then after that, it's just really essentially like support, as I said earlier, it ends with affirmation, right, it starts with knowledge and it ends with affirmation. So again, it's affirming them in their own editing, their own culture and having that having the consultee and the consultant kind of match in terms of like, affirming our own relationship, right, as a consultee. So that's a that's a long and short of it. The thing is it can look so different depending on the situation and the circumstances. And as Emma said earlier, the power differential, right, like what are you what, you know, are you as the consultant? Do you also have right funding behind you? Right. Like that is that is a lot of kind of institutional power, right? Or are you a student or a practicum student and you're the consultant and you know, you're kind of like tolerated. And you know, but but but maybe you have a lot of relational power with the client who really who really, you know, respects you and who you've really good rapport with. So that is also power in itself, right? That's relational power. So also looking at that. That's that's a long and short of it. I left a lot, but that's that's a long short of it. Now that's amazing. Thank you so much. And we just definitely wish we had so much more work. But I would say maybe before we go to our last question and we obviously want everyone to go away and read on the paper and reflect on some of the things that we've spoken about a bit more is posted on our Twitter. But if both of you had kind of one takeaway or major thing that you'd want people to know from the paper, so one one thing that you could both say maybe. I would say that the world has changed rapidly between the time this paper was conceived and now and in so many ways. And so I would encourage people to to think about how they would rewrite the framework today, right? I don't know if that really counts as a takeaway, but like I don't know if I see things that way anymore. So the takeaway is just like constant evolution, right? Like, total competencies never kind of static as I must say earlier. And think about like what ways that you would modify this framework to suit your own needs or rewrite it to suit your own needs. Yeah, just to kind of echo that I think as we had touched on and as we continued, you know, speaking and discussing just this article and the different points that had come up, the world is constantly changing, right? And schools are reflective of that and they will continue to be reflective of that. I think one of the biggest takeaways is also schools are changing, the world is changing. I think that means our role as school psychologist will also be changing, right? Our kind of values, what we choose to put into practice, how we choose to practice every day with our students and the families that we work with and the educators that we work with is really kind of up to us. And I just really appreciate all of Jeff's work and thank you so much for having me here. We do have one last question, which we are ready, which is, if you have one book chapter or article that really kind of changed your thinking around consultation or just that you really enjoyed reading. Hey, sure. Yeah, yeah. There is a book by Dr. Gregory Kehete. It's called Indigenous Community and the Teachings of the Seven Fires. And that one specifically, I think, has really impacted myself and just kind of again, how I think about the role of school psychology, but also just how to integrate more holistic and Indigenous frameworks into kind of everyday practice, which I really appreciate. And I think really speaks to also consultation and kind of echoing that holistic view and kind of framework that we all kind of work towards. And I would say, first of all, when I read that book, I thought that you would be special. A second of all, Audrey Lourdes, Sister Outsider. So it's a collection of short stories and essays that really influenced my thinking on power and intersections of sexism, racism, homophobia. So I would, it's not school psych, but it is definitely theoretically and practically very, very important for anyone doing this work three. That's amazing. Thank you both so much. Honestly, it's been such an amazing conversation, so much to think and reflect about. Thanks, Sarah. Thanks, I'm pretty sure that