TRANSCRIPT OF HELEN PANOS | HELPING PARENTS AND STUDENTS ADVOCATE FOR THEMSELVES
[00:00:00]
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the last episode of 2022. If your child is struggling in school, this is the episode to listen to. Our guest today is Helen panel.
[00:00:14]
Muic Intro Are you facing a crisis in your life or business? It's time to steer yourself in the right direction through the real experiences, passion and courage of our guests. We're taking the helm with your host, Lynn McLaughlin .
Helen Panos is a lifelong educator, but she left teaching to open her own business called the Dynamis Learning Academy. She's offering tutoring services, is branching out into supporting students with mental health, helping students to learn to advocate for themselves and parents to understand the school system, what school systems offer and don't offer, where the gaps are, and advocating whether or not their children have special needs. All right, Helen, you are our last guest of 2022.
[00:00:58]
And what do we close out the year talking about students, students, progress, parent advocacy. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to inform your guests about advocacy and helping their families be successful. Yeah.
[00:01:16]
So just to give everyone a context, Helen is in the United States, I'm in Canada. We're going to do our best to mesh the two languages and worlds together. But the bottom line is, it doesn't matter where you are in the world. Your children are in school, they're struggling, you're trying to find a better way for them. We're here to talk to you today.
[00:01:33]
That's right. That's correct. All right, Helen, tell us a little bit about your background and why you're doing this today. Where did it all start? I'm an educator of 25 plus years of a public school system in Atlanta, Georgia, in the US.
[00:01:46]
And that's one of the biggest school systems I was in is Fulton County. And so I was a teacher for many years and most of that time also gifted leave. So then I decided it was time to start my own business. While I was teaching, I just had the idea that I didn't feel even back then, this was probably about ten years ago, I was already getting the thought that I didn't feel school systems could really truly meet the needs of children. And I wanted to be able to do that.
[00:02:15]
I have a passion about that, and it's not necessarily their fault. It has a lot to do with funding, resources, all kinds of things, and personnel being appropriately trained, to be honest. And there's not enough hours of the day. But I decided to start Dynamic Learning Academy. It's a K through twelve tutoring and now student advocacy program.
[00:02:38]
And we do SATs all over the nation. We also do tutoring nationwide, virtually. Here in Atlanta, we do it virtually, and we're in person because my tutors, I have 15 tutors right now, and that's growing rapidly. So we help kids, we match. I listen to what the parent needs.
[00:02:56]
I match them up with the right type of tutor. I have that experience and knowledge from being also a 504 chair that I got promoted to. Right. As we were going into COVID. I had done it for three years, so I've heard a lot of stories and sat in a lot of meetings, almost to the point I don't want to say I will diagnose your child, but I can get pretty close to suggesting what you need to do.
[00:03:19]
And so I felt like I needed to start my own company, and then now it's branching and rebranding into advocacy, which we're going to talk about today. All right, so those of us in Ontario, Canada, the UK, who are listening, which is a lot of my audience, do not understand what 504 means. That's a good point. You might have a different program. Right?
[00:03:40]
So in America, the Section 504 plan is under the Americans with Disabilities Act. If you have a medical diagnosis of some kind, whether I think the original might have been like, diabetes is why it started in the first place, was that kids might need to leave the classroom and go get their insulin shot or something down in the nurse's office. Right? So it started with that, then it's turned into the biggest one being ADHD. So you have a medical diagnosis of something.
[00:04:06]
Anxiety is very large here in the US. Probably nationwide now, also dyslexia. So if you have a diagnosis from a doctor, a professional, then you get what's called a Section 504, and it's got accommodations to it. You meet yearly, and then you get a reevaluation every three years in this plan. So you can get accommodations, like extended time, frequent breaks for, like, Sat and act here in the US that we give as a big exam going into colleges.
[00:04:38]
So there's a lot of great things related to a 504 plan. And other countries may have something similar. It's very similar. The terminology is different, but we have AODA accessibility for Ontarioins with Disabilities Act.
[00:04:54]
We have Regulation 181, the Education Act in Ontario, where special education is ingrained in there, and the rights for students to attain accommodations, modifications, or alternative programming when they're identified. And of course, that leads us to an Individual Education Plan. And the work that you're doing now to help parents, I think, understand what that all means, what their rights are. Some people don't like me using the words rights. You have a right under the law for these types of accommodations and plans under your child's IEP.
[00:05:24]
And I love what you're doing to help people understand that and how to navigate the system. So what are some of the things, Helen, that a parent would get from you if they said, oh my gosh, my child has an IEP, and they're not getting any of the accommodations they're supposed to be getting? So I want to add two to that. As I was a gifted lead before I go into that. And I don't know about other countries, but here in the US.
[00:05:47]
You can have dual classification. So don't assume. I want parents to realize that even if you have a gifted child, I was a gifted lead for almost ten years. If you have a gifted child, what I was seeing was they can be special ed and gifted. That's called dual classification in the US.
[00:06:03]
So you shouldn't assume that you're gifted child. And I see this in my tutoring business. We've got kids that are 4.0 and they're having issues, okay? So they need a 504 plan. But to answer your question, I listen to what parent needs, and with my experience, I can pretty much either feel like we can help you ourselves in Dynamos Learning Academy, and that might be through starting with some tutoring so we can get an idea of your child to see what they can do or not do.
[00:06:34]
Then we can see, could it possibly be a disability? Could it be something medical? Then we might direct you another way to a doctor to say, go get a psychological done, or we can help you up to this point. But school systems are not going to tell you this, okay, because they don't have the funding. There's a lot to that as to why they don't.
[00:06:59]
They're afraid of lawsuits, let's say. So I also have people that I can direct that they think they need an IEP. They do not have one, or they feel like they're not being treated correctly, and they already have an IEP. I just referred a family that has a four-year-old with an IEP, and she's definitely helping them. The young lady that I've referred her to, and she's a special ed background teacher that came out of the school system.
[00:07:26]
So I feel like parents do not know where to turn because they think, yes, you should go to your school first and see what you can get from it, because there are certain schools that understand and will help, and then there's a bunch that won't for a lot of reasons. So there's other people out there that you can reach out to and get help, so you can have a conversation with them and discuss what is going on with your child. Yeah, so I have to put my superintendent hat on. Retired four years ago with the superintendent hat. And the school systems are very different.
[00:07:56]
We operate on the principle of inclusion in Ontario, right. Which has its pros and its cons, absolutely no question about it. And every school does have some supports within it. But I have to say it's the exact same thing. There's an educator or a leader in this province that won't tell you that we're short on staffing, we're short on funding. There's a waitlist for services. If your child needs counseling, for example, we'll do a referral to the community. There might be something short stop in the middle for emergency situations. But it's very much the same here. There's just not enough for what the needs are.
[00:08:29]
The needs have increased substantially, and you can change the way things are done. And I think that's what we need to be looking at. It can't be the same old, same old. The kids growing up have a different set of circumstances and challenges. Now we've got to change the way we're thinking.
[00:08:42]
And changing a school system is a long haul process. We put a reading intervention program in my school board, and it took four years to do it. It's slow-moving. Wow. And then you're behind the times.
[00:08:57]
But anyway so yes, absolutely, Helen, what you're doing is offering supports and services for parents who need something in addition outside the school. And that's a fact. It's a reality. It's out there, and it's out there across the world in different ways. So you and I talked also not only about tutoring, and I love the fact that you've got educator eyes, helping parents see from an educator's perspective what the gaps might be, because it's not just a diagnosis, it's what's the expectations and what's the gap?
[00:09:25]
And then why do we think there's a gap? I love that idea, but you've now branched out, as we all have to, into mental health. You and I were speaking about this last week. Let's talk about that umbrella. Yeah, I was just speaking to someone I refer a lot of business to that's a psychologist who saw her at tea this weekend, and she is busy until May.
[00:09:46]
So I want parents to realize there is a shortage, like you said, a psychologist. And also they're booked out for months here in the United States. And I'm sure that's everywhere then what do you do while you're waiting for five months as a parent? You're like, struggling. What do you do?
[00:10:06]
So that's why you need to reach out to these other resources and talk to different people and see what can at least be done. I don't want to say put a band Aid on it, but until if we think something is really serious going on, let's say, or there is something more that could be done, until you can be seen by a psychologist and psychiatrist and really have that thing, of course, a lot of school systems do it too. You can go inside the school system, but they're just as busy if not busy. And we're not talking about crises. And that's a different where you're taking someone into an emergency room or a crisis drop in center right when kids are really struggling.
[00:10:44]
That's a fact. And we as parents, this is all new. I wrote a book about my daughter who had debilitating anxiety for a couple of years as an adult. It's all new to us. So, I mean, there are hell and podcasts organizations like yourself. There's lots of places where you can go to get information, to inform yourself and then be able to understand it. I think if we understand the struggles that our children are going from whatever perspective, we can do that because like I said, even just social media puts pressures on them that we never had growing up. I think that's a great first step. Yeah. And even one of my tutors right now, he said to me he's going to stop teaching if he can get into this full time mental health program at Georgia State University here in downtown Atlanta.
[00:11:26]
So I'm probably going to be able to use him. He's already tutors for me and he'll be a great resource that will be down the road. But that's the kind of thing that I think businesses will have to shift to and be with the times. I hate using the word pivot because people get tired of their ears.
[00:11:47]
But really you pretty much do have to change over and kind of try to. I like to say we're like a one stop shop. People come to us at first for tutoring, right. But I have a group of people I can collaborate with that have all these variety of specialties underneath them. So I just did that this weekend.
[00:12:07]
My tutor couldn't work with this child who a teacher gave a big project to. It came from geometry into trig for a unit. She just threw it in here at the end of the year, at the end of the semester. So I had to call in another tutor who met with him for 3 hours on Saturday to get that done. And then he's got a final on Tuesday. So then he met with him again yesterday to prep for that final. But that was like my tutor was honest that I don't think I can do this. I don't even understand what this project is asking for. On top of the fact teachers are burned out across the nation, across the world. So yes, go to your teacher first.
[00:12:47]
I always say that as an educator and see them inside of the building, the principal, the assistant principal, the counselor, see what they'll do for you. If not, you can reach out to us. And I like to hook up my tutors with the permission of the parent to get with the teacher on email because they talk differently to educators. I'll just be honest about that. I'm sure you know that one.
[00:13:11]
So they know we understand the inside world, I like to call it, which is the school system. And parents are just out here trying to figure it out and just going crazy trying to figure out and all they got to do is call me and I'll say, connect me to that teacher. And then when I start talking, they realize they know what I'm talking about. Now they sit up straighter, let's say, and they're going to offer more support to the parent because everybody cannot afford all these outside services. Of course not.
[00:13:45]
I hope that's not happening. I certainly hope that administrators are treating parents as respectfully. We have our different experiences. But you've lived there too. It's happening. Burned out, right? They're burned out too. A lot of them are getting ready to retire. A lot have actually here in Ontario, I can tell you that. But I want to take it to another segue where we're helping our kids advocate for themselves as opposed to us having that responsibility.
[00:14:12]
And I've read a lot of research that's saying as young as twelve years old, we can start to talk to our children, and professionals can talk to their children about what their strengths are, what their needs are, and what tools they need to work around those needs. And if they have an Individual Education Plan to say, you're not giving me not this way, in a very respectful way, I have accommodations in my Individual Education Plan, can we talk about that? And I know twelve years old seems awfully early, but just imagine the future. If these kids are growing up saying, yeah, this is what I need to learn, and I'm going to make sure I get it. I love it.
[00:14:43]
I think it's brilliant. Everybody here in the US. Is pretty much from middle school, 6th grade on, at least, if not a little earlier, fifth grade, probably because they transitioned into a middle school, they kind of start pushing the independence, right? And having parents kind of back off a little bit. But what I'm seeing right now is you got to be careful about that.
[00:15:07]
I'm doing my own podcast, which is Smart Parents, Successful Students podcast. You can follow us on Anchor Spotify and some other places. But I just interview one of my tutors, and she's a high school teacher for many years, and she said sometimes it's too much to the extreme. So parents really need to look at their child, even if it's a 4.0 student, if they're having medical issues, like what I'm seeing right now, that child needs to slow down the independence. She's got other medical issues.
[00:15:38]
So putting the stress on herself is really causing a problem with pain and other things and concentration. So it really depends on I definitely agree with independence, but every parent needs to identify every child in their home, and they could be different in how you deal with them. So this child may be very independent and you can let them kind of go and they'll be fine, but then. It'S a different umbrella, it's a different set of circumstances. A child who's nonverbal with autism, for example, you're going to be advocating them.
[00:16:11]
That's an extreme example, but it is an example for sure, as individuals. But I think if we can all understand what our strengths are and what we need I'm not a math wizard, I'm not a math wizard, but I found some ways around it now that can get me to where I can be a long way, but I get there. Right? Yeah, definitely. We need to definitely promote.
[00:16:32]
I think families need to sit down, maybe have weekly meetings on a Sunday or whenever, pick the best time for you all and sit down and really find out what your child's strengths are. You may think you know, but I think sitting down, pausing the outside world around you and really getting to know your child in terms of what's going on, what do you have coming up this week? What can you do? Speaking of strengths, what can you do yourself and what do you think you need help with? I think it's brilliant checking, because you and I talked about this before.
[00:17:07]
We're on this go, go, go constantly. And especially if you have children in different schools or whatever, two children, three children, five children, regardless, they all come with needs. Right. And you want to be there for them whenever you can. But to have that one to one time, once a week that I'm sure they learn to look forward to. Even if they're 15, if this is. Something that you've taught them and you cherish this time with them, and it's not only about the academics either, then, Helen, what you start to do is put your eyes on when they're starting to struggle with their mental health. And I want to throw out the name Jackie Simmons. You and I talked about this. Jackie has done a TEDx Talk about talking to our kids, our teenagers, just like we would talk to them about drugs, alcohol, pregnancy, about suicide.
[00:17:47]
And she has four specific questions we should be asking them on a regular basis, and then we're going to know when our kids are struggling. So your suggestion to meet weekly has a whole larger umbrella about total to me overall well being, and I love it. I wish I'd have thought about that when my kids were younger here. We all sit in meetings all the time, right? Yeah.
[00:18:10]
Having a meeting in our own family, it's kind of strange, but my corporate families, where these guys are the fathers are executives or whatever, and they're doing that in their home, and I find that I'm listening and I'm looking at, those are the kids that seem to be communicating more. They seem to know what these children need. If they have to reach out to the tutoring company, they reach out to us. They may have a package already, so they just use it immediately as they need it. And we have a tutor available, but it's interesting to watch.
[00:18:48]
Here we all are in meetings all the time, and we don't think about, quote, having a meeting with our own children. He's sitting around the dinner table. In my family, when we're here, we all still sit around the table, but that's still not a place to have that one to one conversation. There's sibling rivalries and there's ins and outs and all those kinds of things. Okay, I want to jump over to something, Helen, you just shared with me me this morning, a report that came out.
[00:19:11]
I believe it was published in an Atlanta newspaper. And I know globally we're all struggling with this as parents. Is this a gap that was created because my child was in virtual schooling for a year, or is there something more that I need to address in terms of a possible special need? What is this report recommending? Well, they definitely are kind of confused in the school systems themselves about that because they're not sure they're very careful about who they put in special ed.
[00:19:43]
Right. Because once you get that I don't hate to call it a label, but once you get into that program, then you don't want your child in there if that's not really where they need to be. Right. So I think they're very careful in trying to determine that the pandemic cause what is being seen in your child right now, or is it something else going on? Or was this something that they had before the pandemic and then the pandemic might accelerate?
[00:20:11]
It's kind of hard. There's a gray area. They talk about that in this article, and it's in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. People can find it. If you want to, I can attach the link.
I'll attach the link to the chat. It's about, do all struggling kids need special education? And the answer to that is no. But do they need something like you're offering like a tutoring service, something to bridge that gap? Especially in my mind.
[00:20:34]
I know you work with children of all ages, but what I see in the biggest gap, gap academically is those kids who are in kindergarten, grade one and two and learning how to read, learning how to write, learning the basic math skills. And I'll speak from a teacher's perspective, doing one to one intervention or one to one instruction online. It's not doable you're going to get to a certain point. So, I mean, let's not place blame on anybody or anything. It's a fact that gap exists. So if we can find a way to fill that gap, then your child can be off and running again. But if you can't find a way to fill that gap and I'm making it very simplistic, and I'm sorry that I am, well, then there's something else that has to happen here. And maybe it's mental hospital off. Maybe it's growing anxiousness. Maybe it's those other things that are getting in the way of them, actually.
[00:21:23]
Is one big thing and confidence building. So those things all seem to be lacking, and one on one will work virtually. If there's some kids, obviously, that can't do one on one kids that might be ADHD and not medicated, if they're very high level ADHD, some good number of special ed kids may not be able to do it. We do a lot of actually 50% of my business is now virtual because high schoolers can do it and they're kind of used to that. It's because it's one on one and we can customize it to meet your child's needs and we connect with the teacher and we get more information now exactly.
[00:22:03]
Now it can kind of be done. The context I was speaking of, just to be here was a school teacher with a class of 35 students able to do one to one. Not the context, one to 30 totally different beaver. They were turning off their cameras. We didn't know what they were doing.
[00:22:20]
They weren't showing up for class. The things that the media wasn't really reporting. But I know that because I was in the school system at the time and I know that's what was happening. But there is this big gray area that they're trying to figure out, which is I mean, and parents can't wait. You can't wait around for your going, well, is it special ed?
[00:22:41]
Is it 504? What is it? So it's best to definitely reach out and get some assistance, at least at a minimum, speak to people, get on these webinars like what I'm going to have here in first quarter of 2023, where I'll just jump right in. And in January we're doing a study skills course because we find out there's three skills that we're seeing lacking. And we're going to do it for 6th to 12th graders. And anybody can join in from anywhere, the UK. Canada anywhere us. But we're going to talk about study skills. And we're inviting the kids to come on with their parents. So my assistant will be on there and or a tutor, and we will be able to do a breakout room and talk to the kids for a few minutes as well and giving them some strategies.
[00:23:27]
Because a big problem we're seeing is I don't think they realize they have to study or what that means. It's kind of interesting. And then the second one in February is going to be I know the first one is January 26 at 730 Eastern Time. That's us time. And then there'll be a replay.
[00:23:45]
So at least register it's free. You can get the replay later if you're somewhere else and you can't watch it because of your time zone. But in February we're also going to do a time management one because that's a whole other issue about habits. And then in March, we're going to do test taking strategies because here in Georgia, they have Georgia milestones that they take. So there's a lot of kids that are taking Sat Act in June and so that will be very helpful for them as well.
[00:24:12]
So that's what we're doing around three series of what I call skills webinars. I love that you've identified. And I teach in post secondary, and I'll go back a year ago when we had students coming into college and they'd been virtual learning for two years, they hadn't experienced exams. And here they were, first year college in a larger class in a different setting, wearing a mask, not able to really communicate, move from their desks, all of these kinds of things happening and then exams. It's a huge transition for them.
[00:24:40]
And I think that empathy part, that giving them self compassion and caring and understanding, but at the same time saying, all right, we're moving on. And these are the things that you now need, and teaching them to look for them themselves too. I think that's fantastic. Yeah. So there's going to be a bitly link and it'll be in the podcast notes and you can just register to come on free and join us for that.
[00:25:04]
Excellent. And those skills apply to anybody anywhere in the world. That's right. And in the workplace, these are skills you need to have in life. Absolutely.
You're right. The parents joining in can learn as well. Right. I mean, we went through our own challenges in the last few years with COVID and these things were happening prior to COVID but the gaps are now so much more larger because more services are needed that are not. And while we could get into staffing shortages, let's not get into that, because that's another reality.
[00:25:32]
Supply teachers that aren't being covered because there isn't someone to educational assistance, and they're pulling people off the street because there's not enough people to do the job. So when the needs become so extreme that we can't fill them, that's a whole other kettle of fish to address. And that's a system. Yeah, right. Especially today, the middle and high schoolers especially.
[00:25:54]
Even though the elementary, too. The kids are very involved here in the US with sports. I'm sure it's like this everywhere, church things. They're involved in dance troops and dance groups, and then those have big conferences and they have to practice more often to be a part of a competition. There's just so much going on that I don't think children are mature enough in their mind.
[00:26:19]
Of course, to everybody cannot manage that time and don't know how to balance it, and they don't know how to make it happen. Or it may come down to, I just need to give up this one thing and this just frees up a bunch of my time. Setting your priorities. What's most important to you? What brings you Passion? Yeah, for sure.
Helen, where can people reach out? What's your website? My website is Dynamis.
[00:26:44]
https://www.dynamislearningacademy.com. And my podcast are all on there, the shows right now, we're just replaying some very popular ones, so you can catch all my seasons in the back. We're recording number seven right now and actually, Lynn will be on season seven, so you'll have to catch her episode. Thank you. And that hits every Thursday morning. On my website starting in January. Season seven will, but all seasons one through six are on there. Plus I have blogs that are awesome and a lot of information in there. And we run those every Tuesday at night on my Facebook page, my Instagram, my LinkedIn. We're doing Facebook Live, so just follow us on Dynamos Learning Academy.
[00:27:31]
On Facebook. And my assistant does Tuesday tips. We'll pick those back up in January. Took a break here in December and I usually come on on Thursday sometimes. And I'll do interviews with people like Lynn or anybody else out of my podcast group.
[00:27:48]
I'll put them back on again so we could talk a little longer and again about other things. So, yeah, reach out and you can join my newsletter on my website as well. There's also a smart goal planner. I wanted to mention that that's a free gift on my website that you can get. You could just sign up to get that and it's awesome.
[00:28:06]
I would suggest everybody start off the new year in 2023, 1st semester with this goal planner. Smart goal planner. So we can find you everywhere and anywhere it looks like. Helen. Yeah, we pop up everywhere and we'll be talking more about the advocacy piece come January as well.
[00:28:23]
All right, well, it is the end of December, and I guess we'll end this by wishing everyone a very happy transition into 2023 and celebrate what we've accomplished in the past year and moving on to even greater things. Yes, I can't wait for 2023 and making new plans for it as well and helping more families. Looking forward to it. Awesome. I am as well.
[00:28:47]
Thank you so much. Take care. Thank you for having me. Take care. Bye bye.
[00:28:51]
Now, carrying on with the parenting connection, and we are talking an awful lot about children's mental health, and so we should as well as our own, amy Stone is going to be our first guest of 2023. If you're in a blended family, you're a stepparent, or you're about to make a huge decision in your life about whether or not this is going to be your future, tune in for our first guest of 2023, Amy Stone. She's been through it and she's helping families and individuals just like you. Stay healthy and safe. Everyone will see you in 2023.
[00:29:48]
Thanks for tuning in and posting your review of taking the helm on your favorite platform. We'll give you a shout-out in a future episode to be inspired by people who are steering us in the right direction. We'll give you a shout-out in a future episode to be inspired by people who are steering us in the right direction. Go to lynmclaucklin.com, where you can search previous guests by the topic of your choice. And while you're there, download Lynn's gift. There's more than one way to get through a crisis.
