The Unspoken ACE: Teen Dating Violence

We talk about ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) at school. We take bullying head on. But there's one especially treacherous ACE that afflicts as many as 1 in 3 teens from which we shy almost completely - teen dating violence and sexual abuse.

Abuse survivor-turned-activist and national touring expert Ashley Bendiksen has made it her mission to bring these widespread and uncomfortable issues out of the darkness in order to shine her light on a welcome alternative - teaching kids how to establish and maintain healthy relationships.

The relevance for public education is immense because, as Bendiksen points out, traumatized kids have a much harder time learning. It's next to impossible to focus on completing assignments or taking tests when students face abuse in their home or key relationships. But few teachers and administrators have been trained how to address such sensitive topics.

This is where Bendiksen comes in with her clarion call. She travels the country sharing her own powerful story of survival, and the expertise she has since developed around domestic and sexual violence, adolescent mental health, resilience and healing after abuse. Further, she points out the profound influence educators can have on young lives when they transcend the academic and begin to venture into the social and emotional minefields many of their students are forced to navigate.

Some of the solutions Bendiksen outlines as a response to this complex and traumatic state of affairs sound surprisingly simple - simple enough that you may wonder why all educators aren't provided with these tools from the outset of their careers.

You can find out more about Ashley Bendiksen, her library of resources and her speaking engagements at ashleybendiksen.com. 

"Outliers in Education" is a project of CEE, The Center for Educational Effectiveness. Find out more at effectiveness.org.

Produced by Jamie Howell at Howell at the Moon Productions.

Transcript

Ad VO: 0:05

Outliers in Education is brought to you by CEE, the Center for Educational Effectiveness. Better data, better decisions, better schools. To find out more, visit effectivenessorg.

Eric Price: 0:21

ACES - a good thing in poker, a bad thing in schools. That's because in education, ACES stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences and, unfortunately, the youth of today are being dealt more than their fair share. On this episode of Outliers in Education, we'll learn how one activist is helping turn those aces into winning hands.

Ad VO: 0:48

I think we really need to change how we look at what we do in schools. Everything that we do as educators, it just comes back to people.

Ashley Bendiksen: 0:53

I love it, even when it's hard, especially when it's hard.

Ad VO: 0:56

Ultimately, I mean, this is about what's best for kids.

Eric Price: 1:02

Hello everyone, I'm Eric Price here alongside my co-host, mr Eric Bowles, from the Center for Educational Effectiveness, and we'd like to welcome you back to another episode of Outliers in Education and Bowles. Can you believe it? We are doing episode number 40.

Erich Bolz: 1:18

I have a hard time believing it, ep. I also would be remiss in not wishing you a happy 56th birthday on the moment of our recording this podcast, which, I would also point out, is a lot further away than 40 and just causes me to pause and reflect on how many incredible guests we've had on Outliers in the last 40 episodes. If you haven't caught any of that backlog, we highly encourage you to do so.

Eric Price: 1:39

Well, today will be no different, as we have yet another phenomenal guest on the docket. As a young woman, she survived a gauntlet of aces, those adverse childhood experiences that I mentioned at the top of the show. It was enough to derail her for a time, as it is for so many of our young people. She became a college dropout and quickly found herself homeless and penniless. If you look in the dictionary under resilient, you might just find her picture there, Because today she's a vaunted national speaker, an activist, an author and an expert in abuse prevention.

Erich Bolz: 2:12

She's the founder of the New Blue Hearts Project, a global storytelling initiative designed to engage survivors of violence and abuse worldwide. She not only went back to college, she graduated as valedictorian, became a youth coach, was named Miss Rhode Island in 2021. Just thought I'd throw that in, as if the rest of the pedigree wasn't impressive enough and now devotes herself full time to teaching teens and parents how to handle the hard stuff, or preferably, prevent it altogether. Please welcome to the show Ashley Bendiksen. Ashley, thank you so much for being here today.

Ashley Bendiksen: 2:44

Thank you for having me, Erich and Eric, I'm very honored to be here and have this conversation.

Eric Price: 2:50

We are so happy that you're here and really just kind of kick us off a little bit. Ashley, You've been through a ton to get to where you are today. Can you share a little bit of your story with us about how you got here and maybe what that tipping point was when you were able to shift away from really some of those deep struggles to the thriving life that you have today?

Ashley Bendiksen: 3:15

Yeah, I think I'll try to keep it brief. I grew up in a small town south coast of Massachusetts two-parent loving home small community of Massachusetts. Two-parent loving home small community never really had any issues as a child and in many ways I was probably very naive to the challenges of the world. And unfortunately, when I became a teenager, that's when I first experienced pretty severe adversity. I was in my very first dating relationship. Unfortunately for me, I chose the wrong person and they became incredibly abusive verbally, emotionally, psychologically and, unfortunately, sexually abusive. And it was that relationship that really started the beginning of what would mark a six-year cycle in my life of really abusive dating relationships, being assaulted by other individuals over the years, trying to navigate this issue on my own and unfortunately turning to a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms, starting as an adolescent up until my early 20s, and so, to make a long story short, today I'm a survivor of abuse, dating violence, sexual assault. I also experienced a lot of bullying. I also turned to things like substances and self-harm. I was depressed, I was anxious. I kind of just had this perfect storm of all the issues that no teenager should have to go through and it really kind of came to an end.

Ashley Bendiksen: 4:47

When I was 20 years old, I was in yet another abusive relationship that did become physical. I attempted to leave, and it was a very difficult process. I had to do so through the court system, and I just remember having this moment where I kind of just had this clarity come to me, where, you know, I looked at everything I'd thrown away. You mentioned it in my intro. I had dropped out of college because of my relationship.

Ashley Bendiksen: 5:13

I was homeless for a while, penniless, and something just clicked that I was never the problem. I had just let a lot of people choose my life for me, run my life for me, damage my life, and as I was rebuilding the pieces and putting my life back together, I was learning a lot about abuse. And I think what really struck me is that all those years, especially as a teenager, as a high school student, I truly believed that my experience was so unique that no one could possibly understand this was just happening to me, and I quickly learned just how prevalent this issue was and I think I felt a sense of almost righteous indignation about it. I was angry because it felt like an injustice. It felt like something no one was talking about, no one had ever told me or warned me and something sparked and ever since I've just been holding this torch and trying to drive change, raise awareness. And that kind of started with me sharing my story and then changed the trajectory of my career and now it's my expertise.

Eric Price: 6:15

So yeah, that's kind of how this whole story came about If I could go back a little bit, Ashley, when you started to think, oh my goodness, this is just me, right? And now you've had conversations with tons of other people. Have they had that similar perspective of isolation and uniqueness?

Ashley Bendiksen: 6:32

Yes, the bulk of my work is as a speaker. I do a lot of school assemblies and I hear this consistently, Students coming up and saying I thought this was just me. I had no idea there was a language for this, a definition, a term for what I'm going through and I've always said it is that sense of solidarity that really brings the most change. Teens especially feel alone in their challenges and to not feel alone that plants that very first seed where someone might eventually ask for help and start to change their situation. So, yes, I do get this experience often.

Erich Bolz: 7:09

Well, ashley, at CEE, we're into the data, as you know. It causes me to sort of wonder about some of the root causal elements about this. You know, one of the statistics that you provided us in the primer, as we got to know you was, this type of thing affects up to one in three children across the United States. What are your thoughts around? How did we get here and then, what are the critical steps we need to take moving forward?

Ashley Bendiksen: 7:32

Yeah, the statistics are pretty startling. I mean, we talk often about other issues impacting adolescents. For example, bullying impacts one in five statistically, so one in three is a pretty significant number and it's concerning that we're not talking about it enough. And this is 33% of all students, not just female students, but students of all genders, all gender identities, and where this comes from it's a mixture. For some students it's that abuse is in the home, it's in the family, there's concerning behaviors that are now translating into their first relationships.

Ashley Bendiksen: 8:08

For others, teens are young and they're in those first interpersonal relationships and they just don't know anything about healthy dating and red flags and like most of us I mean, I think even as adults we can agree most of what we learn from relationships is through trial and error, not through ongoing conversations and coaching and classes on what relationships should look like. So, sadly, most teenagers or, excuse me, a large number of teenagers do experience abuse. And when I say abuse I want to make it abundantly clear. We're not talking about physical violence in these relationships, but it's a relationship where one partner is kind of emotionally, verbally, psychologically harmful. They're controlling, they're manipulative, and this has a significant impact on a young person's mental health, on how they perceive themselves, on their sense of self identity agency autonomy, which is why it's concerning identity agency autonomy, which is why it's concerning so you know critical steps.

Ashley Bendiksen: 9:11

You know mental health is being taught in schools right now. It's great to see that there's such an emphasis. But a huge core component of mental health is healthy interpersonal relationships, and that spans from your dating partner to your best friend to your peer groups and even family dynamics. So I think we need to prioritize healthy relationships education within all of our social, emotional and mental health learning, and that's certainly what I try to do, in the ability that I can, when I visit schools and I speak. But I'd love to see even more effort to teach students what's healthy, what are the red flags and how to ask for help.

Erich Bolz: 9:47

So, ashley, you mentioned you do a lot of school assemblies. You're primarily a speaker. You talked about kids who have indicated gosh. They thought they were isolated, sort of that one-off, and through your process they're learning. I'm not alone, tragically. I'm not even close to alone. Do you have any stories, any interactions that you've had with students that really resonate, where you can say, wow, it was a powerful moment. I think it made a difference for me and for that child.

Ashley Bendiksen: 10:15

There are countless. I mean, it is every assembly that I deliver. Maybe there's not a student that comes up afterwards in person, but I go home to Instagram messages and emails. I would say I'll share two because I think they really paint a powerful picture of the impact of a speaker and at least the impact of what I do as a speaker. The first was a middle school student who, after hearing me speak, ended up reporting an older male who had sexually assaulted her, and a few months later she was in therapy, she was working with the district attorney's office, he was being prosecuted. So that's huge.

Ashley Bendiksen: 10:51

The second one that really stood out to me more recently was a male student who came up and self-identified as thinking he is abusive to his girlfriend and asking what resources exist for him. And that seems to happen more often. You know I do a really good job of not pointing fingers or attacking. You know, the whole point of the message is we all want to be in healthy relationships, we want to be healthy partners, we want to feel good in our lives and secure in our relationships. So I'll tell those kids too. You know, if you think you do some of these things, there's also help for you. This is the age where we can do that. So to me, that gives me a lot of hope.

Eric Price: 11:29

And he actually he had no idea that he was being an abuser.

Ashley Bendiksen: 11:32

Correct. Yeah, wow, yeah. It's inspiring, it's hopeful, yeah.

Eric Price: 11:38

So, ashley, if we could give you the magic wand and you could go into public education to kind of help with some of these things, what would you like to see public education be doing more so to be helping out our kiddos?

Ashley Bendiksen: 11:51

I think I could come up with a list, but I think first and foremost, we really need to understand and this is not anything new to your listeners, but the impact of life issues on individual achievement and academic success. I've mentioned a little bit about the impact on student mental health, but there's also countless research that shows that these issues negatively impact a student's grades performance in the classroom, whether they graduate on time. These are big life issues where suddenly studying for a test feels less important. So one it's really getting that message across that student success is linked to teaching these life skills. I'd love to see it in our health classrooms more than just a one-day health lesson on healthy relationships. So having this consistent messaging, ideally from elementary school up through high school.

Ashley Bendiksen: 12:44

You know we can start teaching healthy friendships at a young age. So really seeing that on a more consistent basis, and I think that there's ways that even teachers can be more empowered to step in. You know I also offer staff PD because a big piece of my story is that there was no intervention and I often have had to wonder what if just one or two concerned adults would have noticed the red flags found me support at age 14, this might've changed my life. So I think really making sure that staff PD also incorporates skills to recognize at-risk students and know how to refer them to guidance, refer them to support in a timely, simple, effective way. You know, sometimes teachers and schools are worried that now they have to become social workers. That is not the ask, it's just you can recognize the red flags and help that kid go get to a specialist.

Eric Price: 13:41

We've got loads more to talk about with Ashley Bendixon, so stick around for 60 seconds and we'll be right back right here on Outliers in Education.

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Erich Bolz: 14:15

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Erich Bolz: 14:34

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Eric Price: 14:56

And we're back. We've got nationally known speaker, author and activist, ashley Bendixson here with us today and lots more to cover. So let's dive right back in, ashley. I am in a position where I'm teaching pre-service teachers. Right, they're going to become teachers and maybe, from some of our perspectives as going to be teachers, we think, oh, this should be happening in the family. Right, these are some. This should be happening in the family. Right, these are some things that should be taught in the family, particularly the dating pieces. And so what are we assuming that maybe isn't happening? If you're going to talk to a pre-service teacher or a teacher in there to say, hey, this is what you can assume is being taught in the family, what would you say about that?

Ashley Bendiksen: 15:35

I think I have two perspectives on that. The first is that for some of these students, there is abuse in the home. You know, family violence is a very real issue, so they're certainly not getting lessons and guidance in that type of environment connected of homes. When kids are struggling, they do a good job of hiding this. My parents had no clue that they even needed to talk to me about things like healthy dating, because they didn't even know I was dating. So you know, teens historically don't open up about these issues. It's awkward to talk to your parents about this stuff, but I think we need to normalize these conversations and school is one way to do it. I think health class is one way to do it. If we're going to talk about, like I said, mental health, mental wellness, you know how people affect us. That's a big piece of it.

Eric Price: 16:28

So getting to that people piece you talk about like relationships being a real core to the health of our students. What do these healthy relationships really do for our students in K-12? What do these healthy?

Ashley Bendiksen: 16:40

relationships really do for our students in K-12? Well, I mean, I think at every age of one's life cycle there's different developmental tasks, and especially in that middle school to high school phase, this is when young people are developing their sense of self, their identity. That is their sole developmental task, and we do this in relationship to others. For teens, uniquely, they're doing that through expanded independence right, they're out doing things, having their driver's license, all of that Plus, they're doing it more socially. And so I think it's really important that you know that we realize that healthy relationships have the ability to allow students to become who they're supposed to be, to thrive. We want students to fulfill their greatest potential, to be authentic and true to themselves, and they can't do that when their friends are negatively influencing their perception of who they are. So if they can develop healthy relationships, do things like establish boundaries with people, they can stay in their lane, stay true to who they are, and they will go on to thrive, not just in the classroom and in our schools, but throughout their lives.

Erich Bolz: 17:46

So, ashley, I'm sitting here thinking about a number of things and making connection to previous podcasts, and we know that the Surgeon General has identified you know, used to be sitting now it's loneliness is the new smoking. As I'm thinking through, you know what you've described. It's really that sense of isolation that creates this opportunity for lack of a better word for these dating violence situations to manifest themselves. Isolation then in turn creates loneliness, and I've been trying to make sense in my own mind around what is so detrimental about loneliness. I mean, why is it, you know, why is a lifespan shortening factor? I'm starting to see some of those tangibles. So making a huge connection to our friends at Only 7 Seconds, luke Wall and Eric Dreesen, who are on a show. Their national mission is to combat loneliness. Can you talk about what that cycle looks like and how it perpetuates itself and give us two or three ideas around how can we help kids break that cycle of isolation and feel less hopeless?

Ashley Bendiksen: 18:42

I think you hit on a few really important points, you know, the first being that loneliness or not feeling like you belong can make a young person more vulnerable to someone who shows up and seems like they are going to be this stable pillar in their life, to be this stable pillar in their life. For dating relationships, often the beginning is filled with big words of affirmation and love and affection and this person makes a student feel like they belong, they feel seen by someone. And when the relationship begins to change, if they tend to be lonely or experience life in isolation, now this person is all they have. Life in isolation, now this person is all they have. So you know that's part of it.

Ashley Bendiksen: 19:25

You know it's interesting because I know loneliness is a big conversation but at the same time, many students kind of feel like they need more alone time. You know a lot of them are connected at all times through social media, comparing what's everybody doing I need to make sure that I'm keeping up with my friends or what everybody's showing online. So I think what we could do is have you know more conversations around the value of aloneness, right, like getting to know yourself, spending time with yourself. You know we live in a really tough world right now, and I think this really comes down to those core lessons that we hope to teach, which is know who you are, develop self-care. You know like yourself, build that sense of agency, autonomy and identity, and hopefully that can combat some of this. So, yeah, that's a tough one to answer, but it definitely makes some students more vulnerable, and I also think that we can have conversations about the value in spending time alone too.

Erich Bolz: 20:20

Have you had an experience with a staff member, an administrator, a teacher, where you know your message changed that school's practice or that teacher's practice?

Ashley Bendiksen: 20:28

Yes, I've had many teachers who, individually, have reached out over the years and said you know, I still bring this topic up in my classrooms. Or, you know, every year we start off with this, or I reference that, or I reference that podcast that you were on once. You told us about it. I have tons of resources on my website, so it happens in different ways. It's interesting. A lot of schools do focus groups with their students and they try to gauge what are the hot topic issues that students want to learn more about and this comes up pretty consistently and it's usually that I become the starting point. For, you know, this came out of the focus groups, this came out of the surveys. Let's bring in a speaker and suddenly every year now they're doing, you know, a February teen dating violence month or an awareness week, or now they're doing PSAs every year. So, yes, you know my work going into schools is often a supplement to existing efforts or it might inspire ongoing yearly efforts once the schools see how important this issue is to teens.

Eric Price: 21:27

I've got a personal question for you. So a lot of my students I don't think they have a very good perception about the world that they're entering into as teachers.

Erich Bolz: 21:38

That's the understatement of the century. Exactly yes.

Eric Price: 21:41

Yeah, so if you were going to give them some advice, like you're going to help me, to help them, what would you say? Like to really get them to a understand the issue better and then have them do helpful things, I think, really to move them out of this feeling of isolationism. What, what would you coach me on, ashley, cause I need coaching.

Ashley Bendiksen: 22:03

Yeah, I think honestly, a lot of this comes from just fostering relationships and you know, that can be something as simple as making sure you say hello to each kid when they come in the classroom, recognizing kids by first name.

Ashley Bendiksen: 22:15

I mean, a lot of kids don't identify one adult that they have a good relationship with, but if you do have that one teacher, that's kind of always hey, ashley, so what'd you do this weekend? Or, oh, do you have any pets at home? Like getting kids just to talk about things that they like, you know that makes a big difference. You know, and I think, just repeating in the classroom, if anyone ever needs anything, I'm here as a resource, you know, constantly mentioning that between building a good relationship and reaffirming that you are a support. Hopefully kids do then one day say hey, you know, ms Bendixson, can I talk to you? Or you know, I think I want to talk to someone else. So I think that's important and you know, I think the other piece too is just, you know, really recognizing the impactful role that teachers can play. It's like Eric mentioned at the end for many students, school is the only safe place.

Ashley Bendiksen: 23:03

A teacher might be the only safe adult. And I think just recognizing, like the subtlest little red flags, that hunch that maybe a kid needs a little help, that's all you need to do. And then go tell a social worker at the school, go tell a guidance counselor to check in with a student. So you know very little things that can make a big impact in the life of a kid who has no one else.

Eric Price: 23:25

And do you see any time when, as a mandatory reporter, that that's an impediment to that, that there, that gets a little clunky.

Ashley Bendiksen: 23:34

Yeah, it's challenging because I think, you know we want to help kids that are in trouble.

Ashley Bendiksen: 23:39

But you know, mandated reporting can cause a lot more issues for a child too, and it's one of the reasons a lot of kids don't talk to teachers.

Ashley Bendiksen: 23:47

So, you know, I think one issue informing kids of the process of like here are people at school that are, you know, are confidential here's, here are the things you can talk about versus the things you can't, where we're required, most kids have no idea who they can talk to or what they can say. You know, I always tell teachers if a student starts to open up, it's okay to say, hey, I'm just going to stop you right there, just so you know. If you say A, b or C, I'm a mandated reporter, but you know if there's another way you can ask me for advice, or you know if something's impacting someone. You know, I think kids just getting help is the most important thing. So we just have to come sometimes stop them. You know, a big part of this, like I said, is building trust, and if a kid trusts you and then you go report, you've just ruined that trust and they don't get it.

Ashley Bendiksen: 24:35

So I think it's just being really direct about what that looks like.

Eric Price: 24:40

Awesome, Ashley, my goodness, there are so many things here that I think that we really need to be reflective of as educators, and there are things that we aren't trained on right, Like these are not things that we have curricula that are pointing towards, but and yet I think there are some of the hugest needs for for our kiddos. So I I am so appreciative of you being in this space and having these conversations with these kiddos, and, and and I think that the second piece is really helping us as leaders how do we help other kiddos out with some of these things that they're in isolation when we don't know? So this is that part of the show when we tap Bolzy and we say, hey, Bolzy, what do you got for a wrap up here? So we had some Dr Phil's for you here, Bolzy, what do you got?

Erich Bolz: 25:32

Well, thank you for setting me up for success EP. I have, as usual, a page full of notes. Really, starting with the top, ashley's origin story is inspiring overcoming a six-year cycle of dating abuse in the teens up until age 20. I think about myself at age 20. I'm not sure I had the agency to overcome much of anything at all, much of anything at all. So to go on that journey to some extent alone and come through and out the other side and be making this type of impact for our kids across the country is impressive and a testimony to obviously a deep wellspring and spirit that Ashley possesses. She gained clarity by looking at everything she'd thrown away and wanting to strive for that, so certainly moved by the message, turning negatives into positives. We are the sum total of our story and those of us who have had negative mentoring experiences in our lifetime oftentimes use those as touchstones to make the most change. So resonated on that level.

Erich Bolz: 26:24

We talk about bullying. Bullying is a huge emphasis in public schools, codified in law. Here in Washington State it impacts one in five kids, but we almost have no conversation around dating violence. That impacts one in three. That was a huge, huge learning for me and I wonder why. I wonder if it isn't just the uncomfortable nature of the topic that causes other things to be more easily focused upon. Healthy interpersonal relationships are a huge component of mental health. We see that in our own survey, work with students for sure, again and again and again with almost all of our guests that speak here on the mental health and SEL side. Traumatized students can't learn and we know from our outlier study that family atmosphere that we see in those schools might create the opportunity I think in Ashley's words for a needed intervention. When there is abuse at the home, kids may not have any place, but school to turn to Isolation seems to be a factor. And like I connected, the home kids may not have any place, but school to turn to Isolation seems to be a factor. And like I connected the podcast, isolation can lead to loneliness and we know that loneliness now has detrimental impacts. Isolation is the controlling strategy in a relationship. Perhaps one way through it and something else we measure is a group of strong, supportive friends can be an antidote to that isolating personality.

Erich Bolz: 27:34

Student agency she talked a lot about student agency and again, something I resonate with. What I liked at the end was really sort of that organic sense. I think Ashley's answer was a textbook answer and how you really ought to use REES student data. At CEE we talk about surveys and then pulling those key pieces of data out and having student focus groups, letting students have some agency in not letting but in ensuring creating an environment where students have agency in picking what they want. Next, leading to some of Ashley's school assemblies and speaking gigs A textbook answer on what we believe that the data is no good unless you act and while having Ashley come in and talk to your school just seems like it would be an awfully powerful thing for each school to do, given the impact, this almost epidemic that we don't talk about. So, ashley, I learned a lot today in summary and can't thank you enough for coming on the show.

Eric Price: 28:23

Thank, you for having me. Yeah, I as well. I want to point our listeners to you've got your website at ashleybendixingcom and your book Language of Time, and that was in 2020. Is there anything that we were talking about in here, ashley, that you think our listeners need to hear, and make a shameless plug for your other work.

Erich Bolz: 28:45

This is a great time for that.

Ashley Bendiksen: 28:47

I will say this I just revised an ebook that I wrote for parents. It's 11 pages. It is packed with information. So I think, if there's any listeners who also tend to have teenagers of their own, soon to be teenagers, I'm inspired at the idea of a parent reading this and just being informed with this whole wealth of knowledge and a topic that they might not have thought about. So that's on my website, but a quick link is ashleybendixoncom. Forward slash parents and they can snag it for free there. So that's on my website, but a quick link is ashleybendixoncom. Forward slash parents and they can snag it for free there. So really great resource that I would love more people to access.

Eric Price: 29:20

And your other topic. In your language of time book it is Alzheimer's. What's that?

Ashley Bendiksen: 29:26

It is, yeah, interesting story. My mom developed Alzheimer's at 48 and she passed from it at 56. At 48 and she passed from it at 56. Totally unexpected as far as we know, not genetic on her side of the family, so it was definitely a plot twist in my life and it marked an eight year cycle of taking care of her. I became a caregiver and, just like I was a journaler in high school when I was going through tough times, I was also a journaler then as a caregiver, and so I turned it into a memoir and it's a very vulnerable but, I think, powerful and, as I've always said, it's a read that creates solidarity for an issue that often people feel really isolated and alone with. So that's the story of me caring for my mom until she passed away.

Eric Price: 30:09

Well, again some similar themes there, ashley relationships, isolation. I think that absolutely carries over into some of the other topics. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. I hope that our listeners will be able to understand some of these pieces that aren't really showing up on their radar, but we absolutely need to respond to. So thank you again, ashley, for being on the show.

Erich Bolz: 30:32

Thank you and thanks to all of you for listening in today. You can find this episode and more anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts or visit us online at effectivenessorg. Until next time. This has been Outliers in Education.

Ad VO: 30:50

If you'd like to find out how to gather the data you need to help drive positive change in your school or district, take a moment to visit CEE, the Center for Educational Effectiveness, at effectivenessorg. Better data, better decisions, better schools.