Guy Stephens

I'm so excited to have you here, Guy, today. Thank you, thank you, thank you for taking time for matching up our schedules. Part of what we're doing in this series is we're just letting parents, teachers, educators, administrators, humans, know that they're not alone in this entire paradigm shift that we're in. So I'm going to let you do a little bit of introducing yourself and then we're going to, we're just going to chitty chat about what you do and who you are and how this all works.

One, to help us feel like we're not alone, but two, to empower us, to empower us in change. And, I think about, I met you out in Nashville at Matthew Purtell's conference and sat across the table from you and shared some conversation with you. We're beginning to, to do some really hard work, but we feel frustrated and we feel alone and I'm just really honored to know you as a human and to have a chance to do some work

with you. I will tell you a little bit about myself. I don't want to get too carried away because it's easy to do. I got into The work that I'm doing now which is as the Executive Director of the Alliance Against Collusion Restraint which is an organization that I formed a little over four years ago, and I started down this road really quite unexpectedly. My background was actually in marine biology and environmental science. I've been working in my field for over 20 years.

I had no intent of changing gears, looking for a new hobby, looking for a new career.

But I had an experience and the experience was I have a neurodivergent son who was physically restrained and secluded in a public school. I don't even know that I would have known that restraint and seclusion were something that might have happened to a child at a public school until it happened to my son. But what I'll tell you is that the experience was traumatizing to him and really quite traumatic for our family. And it led me to doing a lot of research. I wanted to understand.

Why were these things happening? Why, why were kids? And when we looked at the data, it was kids with disabilities, black and brown kids, kids with a trauma history, why were these things being done? And ultimately, understanding that these things being done led to trauma, they led to injury, they led to death. And having lived it firsthand, I felt that I needed to do something not only to protect my son, but the more I got into this, the more I realized that there were you. others out there.

And there were kids out there that didn't have anybody in their corner.

And I started this non profit really with the mission of how do we work together? How do we collaborate to provide better environments, better schools for kids, for teachers, and for staff? How do we move away from some of the practices that actually can be quite harmful? And they've been done for many years, but that doesn't mean that they're things that we should be doing.

And, the Alliance is really focused on, initially, when I first started the organization, the focus was I wanted people that were going through this to know that they weren't alone. And I wanted them to know that they could influence change, because, here I was, just the dad, and based on what had happened to my son, I began advocating for change. I began working with other people.

We were able to change the policy and the practice in our school district to reduce and eliminate the use of restraining seclusion. The year it happened to my son for the very last time back in 2018, our district had 750 restraints and over 500 not a big district either. This current school year, they had no seclusions and they had 10 restraints at the last time I got data from them at the midway point of the year. You can see it really made a huge difference.

But, today we do things around legislation, around education, and trying to support people. That was probably a longer intro than you wanted, but I would just say that I'm a fellow human.

That is on a journey, and I think the journey is, and I don't mean this to sound kind of silly, but it's about how do we make the world a better place, and I've had the opportunity to learn a lot of things over the last few years and work with a lot of people, and I think there's a lot we can do to create better schools, to create better workplaces, to help better support human beings, and once you see that, you can't unsee it. I'll stop there.

We've taken a couple emails back and forth to make this happen. There are people that are experiencing these things all over the world. When I did my podcast with you, we had people from all over the world. And I want to point that out for a lot of reasons, because I'm sure for you, it's similar when you meet someone and they're at the very beginning of this journey, it feels desolate. It feels like you're crossing the plains of the West and there's no one else behind you, right?

And you don't know. And you, 2018, and here we are in 2023. Five years later, and you really set out to do the research, make some changes. You started locally. It sounds like, how did you expand? How did you say, you know what we did the work here locally. How do we get this at state level? How do we get this federally? I know people are calling you from all over the world guy saying, what do we do? I just, I'm curious about that.

I'll begin by saying that. Again, it was somewhat of an unexpected journey, meaning that when I started the Alliance my very first goal was, you know, just about sharing information. I had been doing research, and I found it difficult to find the information I was looking for, and I thought, well, maybe somebody else will benefit from this. And then from there, it was, well, gee hey, I'm making some change, and maybe if I share some things, it'll help other people make some change.

I never intended really to see an organization that would grow to a point where we, we had an international reach. In fact, when I started this, I had been working the same job for over 20 years and last year I actually left my job.

To focus on this work, and I, I say full time, but I've been doing it full time for the years prior to that, but you know, the Alliance now is my work, I mean, I had a really interesting decision to make at one point, which was knowing I couldn't continue to work two full time jobs Which is what I was doing for, for quite some time. I had to choose between a job that paid me a salary and benefits and one that hadn't paid me anything. And I knew where my heart was.

I knew I needed to continue to do this work. But our growth kind of happened organically. We, we started to share information. We began a... live series, which we've been doing now for gosh, going on four years we started a live series where we interviewed experts. We interviewed parents, we interviewed educators.

I think one of the things that's unique and unique may not be the right way to describe it, but when I started this work, I was determined that if I was going to be successful in helping to bring about change I had to be really thoughtful. I had to be really intentional. But I also had to step away a little bit from my emotions because I had a lot of emotions. I was angry. I was upset. I wanted somebody to pay for what had happened to my son.

But I knew that I wanted to really bring about change, that I needed to approach it differently. I needed to do my research. I needed to work with people. I needed to collaborate. And, you know, I collab have collaborated over the years with you know, people that may, you know, for instance, in, in my own district we formed a committee to look at the issue of restrained seclusion across the table for me where people that had actually physically restrained my son. That was not easy there.

And one of the things that we run into a lot, I think in this work is. The lack of acknowledgement of the weight of that and that it was probably also traumatic for the people that were restraining

You know, one, when we decided we were going to have this committee, um, the whole time I was advocating to get a neutral facilitator for the process because I thought, gee, here's 80 percent of the people that are with the school district and me and a couple of parents. I recommend it. I don't know how this will go. I did a tremendous amount of research before we had our very first meeting.

I had kind of a little book of research show that I would have at my fingertips when I became dysregulated, I would have information that I could go to I'll tell you, I stopped at a Starbucks before our first meeting where I was going to meet another parent I felt my heart pounding on my chest I had. And, and I'm not somebody that typically has a lot of anxiety, but I had a tremendous amount of anxiety. Probably felt like, you know, I'm going to have a heart attack here. It was really difficult.

But I went into that room and I sat down and I felt like, okay, I've got, I've got knowledge. I've got information. I've got data. This isn't just about how I feel. Very early in my personal advocacy journey, which began with advocating for, You know, supports on accommodations for my son, who was neurodivergent. One of the first things that I read, when I really realized, like, I need to take this IEP process seriously, was from Emotions to Advocacy. You know, Pete Wright's Wright's Law book.

And, and it was a really good foundation to really think about, you know, these things that we feel, these emotions that we have, you know. And we know, I mean, I know now much more about how trauma affects my brain and everyone else's and what that can do to us. So, you know, I think part of what I was doing was trying to be prepared in a way that I could bring myself back if I was feeling overwhelmed with emotion. And that first meeting, that first day.

That, you know, again, 20 minutes before the, the meeting, I felt like, Oh God, I could just fall on the floor here and die. When we left that first meeting, the assistant superintendent, who I subsequently became you know, I would say you know, maybe, maybe not a personal friend, but, but I think we had a really good relationship working together by the end of the process. But at the end of that meeting and how it was facilitated I felt positive.

In fact, they ended the first meeting asking the question of, should we get rid of seclusion? That was, I was the only one that was pushing for that. So, so, you know, I kind of felt heard. But also, when I had an opportunity to talk to educators, school psychologists and others, we broke out into little breakouts. And of course I was a little anxious about that. But what I found is that we could agree on more than we disagreed on.

And when you can get to that point, and you can listen, and it really does take it's not easy. It's not easy to move past that. You know, again, if you've been traumatized you know, that trauma puts us, of course, in our place in our brain that we're not. getting to our prefrontal cortex. So I had to proactively think about how do I get myself back there? How do I keep myself there?

And I know more now, and I wish I'd known the things that I know now, then, because they probably would have been really helpful.

But I think the overall idea was You know, we're going to be far more successful collaborating than just, you know, I mean, there's a temptation when you've been wrong to want to burn the system down you know, kind of figuratively and, and, you know, the truth is that, you know, I believe in approaches like raw screens, collaborative, proactive solutions not only for kids, but like, As adults, like we're going to do better if we can work together, that's right, that's right. Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So you go down this road, you do this research, you start locally, you start to make some change and some advocacy and you see some things shifting and then, and then what

So, so in terms of the, the growth question you know, we begin doing these live events where we have people from all over the world that start joining on as you mentioned when you were on our our As our live series we had probably people from New Zealand and Australia and the UK and India and, you know, the things that we're, that we're working on here that sometimes feel very unique to us. There are people all over the world that are working on very similar things.

There are people all over the world that realize a lot of the approaches that we're using in our schools, you know, as an example, you know, a lot of the behavioral, Approaches that are being used are not working for kids. They're not working for adults. So, you know, we began to kind of get more and more people involved. We began to try to support initially that the thought was, how do we support? changes locally. That's, that's where I began.

Next it was, can we support changes at a state level? I began doing some work within my state of Maryland, but very quickly began branching out to, can I help other states that are going through this? And, you know, when the alliance formed there weren't a lot of other organizations doing this work. In fact, I had searched the internet looking for a community like the one that we ultimately created. and really didn't find them. I found, I found remnants.

I found communities that had started maybe around a piece of legislation and then they kind of disappeared. I found, you know, organizations that became active at certain points and cycles, but really weren't doing a lot of work on this. And you know, there really, I thought was a need to, to really push this work. But as we began to do more of it. People began to reach out like, Hey, you know, we're, we're, you know, because here's this organization.

If you, you know, are looking to learn about restrained seclusion you know, we're, what you're going to find on Google. And suddenly the press was reaching out. We had people in different states that were reaching out for help. We began to provide testimony in various states whether it was Illinois or Maine or Washington state. You know, we've been working with states across the country to try to support. We also have a tremendous community and I'm so proud of our community.

You know, if you go to our social media and, you know, I guess maybe we're a little old fashioned in that Facebook is probably our most active channel because we have a lot of parents. We have a lot of educators, but, you know, considering that we talk about some pretty tough things, it's a really civil place to be. It's a really compassionate and understanding place to be. And our audience.

They're composed of parents who have had children that have been restrained, secluded, suspended, expelled, subjected to corporal punishment. There's self advocates, autistic self advocates, who have experienced these things. We have a lot of teachers, paraprofessionals, school administrators, psychologists, social workers. I mean, it really is a broad community, and what ties us together is this thought that, like, we can do better. We can do better, and we can do better for all of us.

And it's really easy sometimes when you're doing advocacy work to get into an us versus them model. And that's not what we're trying to do here. We want to, you know, I mean our vision is about safer schools, right? And it's for the kids, the teachers, and the staff. We want to collaborate and work with people. And I think that's been part of the growth. But I think, you know, part of this is we're focused on something very specific. That while...

You know, I mean, there's a lot of people you'll talk to in education even that don't even know these things happen. But there are many people, unfortunately, that have had these experiences. And, you know, fortunately, because the world has become more of a global community now, I can reach out to colleagues all over the world.

I mean, the fact that you and I can pop on anytime we want and have a conversation, or I can say, Hey, you want to join me for, for Well, I don't call them chitty chats, but you know, a chitty chat on, on the Alliance, you know, live program where I can join you. There's a lot of hope about that.

So I think that the growth was very organic, you know, as, as we began to grow you know, the media was reaching out, other states, I mean, we work with lawmakers in other states, you know, we might work on a local level.

You know, at a school or school district we were supporting a district recently, and I say supporting, that means having conversations, trying to help a school district in Vermont that had one of the highest rates of restraint and seclusion in the state, and you know what, that superintendent a gentleman named Mike very collaborative and, and working with the board to bring about positive change, and they recently passed a new policy You know, we certainly are not responsible for that in full,

but we helped. We were involved. We, we tried to offer alternatives and we tried to, to provide help. We work on a state level. You know, Washington State had a great bill that was around this past term. Unfortunately, it didn't pass, but it will be back and I think it will. And, and we work on a national level. You know, I've advocated for the Keeping All Students Safe Act, which is federal legislation that would ban the use of seclusion. Ban prone and supine restraint.

And again, for those in your audience that don't realize it, you know, prone restraint, you know, face down restraint can be used on five year olds in some states around the country. Well, that's how I got

And it's interesting because one of the things you probably know about me is that I'm not a huge advocate of compliance based approaches, right?

I'm an advocate for. Connection. I'm an advocate for neuroscience. I'm an advocate for trauma informed care. And a lot of our approaches in our schools and in many places is very compliance based.

And the problem with compliance based, you know, approaches, of course, is that they're not They're often not helping kids that really need our help, and they're often quite traumatizing to kids, and it's not just about things like restraint and seclusion, but when kids are having a hard time, and, you know, the only approaches are compliance based approaches, and you assume that they have the ability to do the things you're asking them to do It's really not only frustrating in the moment, but

it's really demoralizing, I mean, a lot of kids have very low self esteem, they see themselves as problems, they feel like they can't meet people's expectations, and you know what, they say, we can do better, there are better things we can do to support kids, you know, this is about raising tiny humans and, and doing a good job at it. Love that.

This whole series involves people who do connection, regulation, trauma informed practices, all those things, which are really important. We also didn't have all that information. 25 years ago.

shame. This is about like, Hey, we're on a journey. Join us. Let's, let's learn more. Let's figure out what we can do to do better because I'm a firm believer, the things that we can do better, you know, when it comes to, for instance, working with children or working with any human, those things we can do better are also really beneficial to us. All of this work really starts with us. If, if we want to do better, we've got to begin looking at ourselves.

And you know, sometimes that's not the approach that we take. We think about other people and we, we think about them making willful decisions to do things in a certain way, when in fact we know a lot more today.

a second. We have to look at ourselves. Oh, that's so hard. Right? So when I know you're a proponent of this, we never ask kids to do things. We're not willing to do ourselves. Right. Right. And part of that is looking at our own journey. What is our own emotional regulation? How do we take care of ourselves? How do we. How do we connect with people who've hurt us? How do we restore, repair, all those things?

And that's one of the reasons I really love talking to you because not only is your organization making change in policy and practice, you're living this work.

Oh my gosh, did it, did I really do that? You know, and, and, you know, I also look back on moments where. I learned things that were so critical and, and now with the you know, the, the knowledge I've acquired through, through research, through getting to have conversations with, with people like you, the knowledge that I've acquired actually now explains some of the things that I didn't have an explanation for.

But, you know, when I, when I first realized that my son, who was neurodivergent, that. that my demeanor, that my calm meant so much in the moment when things were going wrong.

When I learned to take a step backwards, when I learned to have a very calm and soothing voice, when I learned to give him a moment when he needed a moment, It made a world of difference. In fact, I remember at one point, you know, my son was pretty young and my wife went like, I don't get it. Why does he respond differently for you? Well, it's because I was responding differently, what I was doing. And you know, we say it starts with you.

And of course, you know, well, and, and I think many people intuitively know this, but in the moment forget, but you know, how we feel, how our emotions are taking grip of us. If we're feeling dysregulated. We can't help someone else in that moment, right? If we're dysregulated, the same thing happens to us that happens to a child. When we become dysregulated, our thinking brain goes offline. Anybody here ever said something when they were really upset and they later regretted it?

We weren't thinking about that. We were dysregulated and I think we've got to know, we've got to be vulnerable, right? We've got to realize that even as adults, you know, I won't, well, I mean, I'm 53 years old, even at 53 years old I'm gonna, I'm gonna have bad moments where I'm overwhelmed. Something is, is not going well. And I'm going to become dysregulated. We need to understand that and that's human and that's normal.

But we do need to understand how important are, you know, our demeanor, our approach, our words, all the things that we can do meaning are really meaningful to someone else that's having a hard time. Love that.

We're always looking in the mirror, the beauty of losing your business with your own teams, even though, you know, everything, and we're experts in this field and la la la. We have an opportunity to practice the repair part, right? And that is the critical component for connection. And one of the things I really appreciate about you sharing your story is sitting across.

People across the table with people who had impacted your family in such a huge way, because I'm guessing there were moments of being able to repair, of being able to be vulnerable, of being able to say, yeah, that didn't feel good for me either. And, and you look at it more from We're tackling a system and a problem of how education has been developed, what's going on together. This is everyone in it. Everyone involved in it is a part of that solution. It's not an us versus them.

And we know information that's really helpful. So you shared when I'm calm, my kids respond better. What's, what are two or three other things in your journey that are the standout go tos for you that have been game changers that you've learned?

You know, I mean, I think I hit on a couple of them. I mean, calm is one of them, but, you know, the very calm, soothing voice is really important. Hey, buddy, you need a minute? Okay, I understand.

Apologizing, apologizing when, not if, because we will, apologizing when we When we mess up, you know, and, and we do you know, we expect kids to apologize and sometimes try to force apologies and, and, and I don't think that's ever appropriate but I think for us to sincerely apologize, like, hey, you know what, I kind of lost it and, and I'm sorry you know. It's not about making excuses.

It's not about Mr. Chaz one time I was talking to him and he had a quote, he said, leave your butts in your pants. Like an apology shouldn't have a butt behind it, you know, shouldn't say, I'm sorry, but, and that's an easy thing to do. So, I mean, you know, that, that's another thing that, that I've learned, but I've had the opportunity to learn from a lot of brilliant people.

And I always feel like, you know, I greatly appreciate the opportunity and the honor to talk to so many amazing People that are changemakers. And of course, at the end of the day we're all people, you know, everybody's, you know, with their, there's, but I think about something that our friend Joe Brummer says about accountability. And Joe, of course, you know, wrote a book on trauma informed restorative you know, approaches and, and Joe talks about how accountability should feel good.

That's something that's really stuck with me, that idea that like, Hey, you know, it's not just about these punitive consequences, doing things to people. It's like. When we mess up, whether it's us or whether it's a kid, like when you repair something, that should feel good. So, you know, I think some of the big things I've learned are being accountable myself, understanding my own state, and sometimes being able to do something that might help me in that moment when I'm feeling dysregulated.

So many things we can do, but... It's a journey. And you know, none of us are going to be perfect. So I think the other thing is forgiveness, you know, for ourselves and for others when we're not at our best, because we're all going to be there.

So the big question, I mean, I think there's a couple of things that are happening that are very exciting.

I would love it if you would chat a minute about your work with, the Crisis Prevention Institute. Are you up for

I will be very candid with you and say that my son was restrained. in the name of CPI. He was being restrained using CPI holds at his school. That was a training that they took. So you might wonder why on earth would the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint be working with a company that actually teaches holds or restraints? And that's a really good question to ask. The answer is of course you know, somewhat somewhat long, but I'll, I'll simplify it.

And that is that after a lot of discussion, I kind of have a philosophy that I'll talk to anybody, even if I don't necessarily agree with what they do or what they think, or maybe what I think about what they do or what they think. I'm always willing to have a conversation with anybody. And part of having conversation means not just speaking, but listening. And I've always. pride of myself on the ability to make space for those that I might not agree with because you will never collaborate.

You will never work with somebody towards change if you can't work with them at all.

So I had a series of, well, you know, it goes back a little bit further, but I had a series of conversations with somebody from CPI about a year ago, and there were some conversations about potential collaboration. My initial response was, yeah, I don't think so. But we We kept talking and we had many conversations over the course of, over last summer. And ultimately, we talked about some potential opportunities to collaborate, but I still wasn't quite there.

I wasn't quite to the point where I'm like do I see this? Do I see this as a good thing? And eventually you know, the, the gentleman that I was working with said, well, what is it? What, what, what would help you to feel better about this kind of collaboration? I said, well, If we're going to do something like this, I want it to be intentional. I want it to be meaningful. And I want it to be something that will really bring about change.

And you know, I, I made a suggestion as we were talking, I said, well, for, for. One, I would love to see CPI come out and say they're aligned with the alliance in eliminating the use of seclusion and reducing the use of restraint. And they agreed to do that. In a press release, in fact, that went out last December, CPI said that they're aligned with us in working to reduce the use of restraint and eliminate the use of seclusion.

And actually, subsequently, have been involved in testimony around the country supporting bills. That would reduce the use of restraint and eliminate seclusion. But what was more important was I realized in a couple of conversations that there was a tremendous potential to collaborate. I'm a huge believer, as you know, in the brain science, in the trauma you know, kind of the trauma-informed piece in.

You know, relationships and in collaboration, and I'm a big believer in what we would call kind of the upstream piece of this, right? Rather than, you know, if you look at CPI, Crisis Prevention Institute NBCI is really about crisis management you know, it's de escalation, verbal skills, and then potentially physical skills. My thought was we really need to move further upstream.

There's a quote from a Desmond Tutu that says something along the lines of rather than pulling people out of the river, we need to go upstream and figure out why they're falling in. And I began a couple of conversations with Susan Driscoll, who's the president of CPI.

And, I got excited one day on our, our phone call and was diving into the brain science of why it was so important and how I felt like if people knew a little bit of brain science and, and really shifted their lens, you could really make a lot of progress in reducing restraints, seclusion, suspension, expulsion, corporal punishment, all the things that were being done

to kids. And What began to develop, I was asked to give a presentation to CPI staff on the brain science and I did, and I, I used it somewhat as an opportunity to say you know, here's the brain science, but here's, here's where CPI is from my perspective, and, and here's where I think that you could go in a positive direction to, to lead to positive change. And it was really well received.

And as people began, in fact, I remember I had some people that were making comments at the end and, you know, young man was like, you know, Hey, I grew up with ADHD and I had a lot of difficulties. I'm so excited to hear this, this conversation. Well, it's now turned into a project where. We are collaborating with CPI to develop training that is really what I would call upstream training.

It's a way of, you know, and one of the advantages here is we had begun a process at the Alliance of trying to develop some training around reducing restraints, seclusion, a lot of punitive approaches. But here's the thing, Stacey, if, if, if we finish that training in a year, year and a half, and then we piloted it in a few schools in five years, maybe we're in 25 schools. Right. There are 14, 000 school districts across the nation.

CPI currently is in more of those districts than anyone else when it comes to the work that they're doing. And I realized that if we could partner with CPI and develop something that would bring, bring into a more mainstream setting. You know, the neuroscience, the trauma, you know, things that people could do to understand regulation and reframing behavior, that it could have a tremendous impact.

So we are now actively developing an initial course, which is actually going to be far more than a course, I don't want to get to say too much, but I, I imagine it as an ecosystem that will continue to grow. It's really. I think game changing, changing the direction, not only for, for CPI, let's say but also really the approaches that are being taken in general and at our schools. So for someone like CPI to, to really take this position in leadership and, and trying to bring some change here.

And, and what I'll tell you, the, the thing that really compelled me when we finally decided to agree. was after I had talked to a guy named Marvin Mason, who I've been working with at CPI, and Susan Driscoll, who's the president, I, I realized something that was really important to me. And that was that they were people that were doing this for the right reason. This wasn't just about, well, we need to be more profitable. You know, Susan, who's taken a very active role in this project kind of.

sees it the same way I do, which is like, this is something that could change the world. And I don't mean that to be, you know, overly dramatic. I think that we can, I mean, of course, anytime you change the world for one kid, it's a positive difference, but the potential for something like this is really great. So I'm excited.

And I think you know, we, like I said, I just got off a meeting where we're bringing in people from education and various roles in education to get their feedback and their input. And this is actively being developed. And my hope is That we've got a program early next year that is going into some initial you know, pilot testing and then, you know, kind of put out there more widely. And again, you know, there's so much need for this work out there and there's so many amazing people doing it.

You know, whether it's you or, or Matthew Bertel or, you know, James Moffitt or people that are, you know, Jim Spoerler, people that are doing this work out there. But this isn't about, you know, like a competitive kind of environment. This is like, we need an army, right? We need people out there doing this.

And, and I think that, you know, the, the things that we will provide in this training you know, for some would be an appetizer to then dive in deeper and, you know, take a program like Laurie Nesitel's Applied Educational Neuroscience, or, you know, go to a talk by Mona Della Hook or whatever it may be. But there's a lot of opportunity here, I think. Thank

And so that talking to the army, you know, building the army that I tell people all the time, my partner says to me, how many of these people are you going to interview? And I said, all of them, all of them. And he's like, do they have the same message? And I said, underneath it all, we probably all have the same message, but we each have a different voice. We each have a different way of delivering it. We all have a different journey in how we got there.

And there is someone listening who needs to hear each of us. And that is what makes this stuff so, so important. So Thank you. Thank you. This is fun. Isn't chitty chatting fun? It's fun. It's so much less formal. Tell me, tell my, my audience, which is now your audience, your audience, now my audience, tell our audience, how do they find

you

And, you know, it's much broader than even all the punitive things, restraints, seclusion, suspension, expulsion, you know, corporal punishment. It's really about how do we, you know, how do we change the things that we're doing very often around behavior? It's around the kids that are so often misunderstood and many people that are misunderstood. But if people want to find us, of course, they can always Google Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint. Our website is EndSeclusion.

org End, E N D. We are on Facebook, YouTube. LinkedIn, Twitter we've got some TikTok going on, we've got some Instagram, so, you know, we're in a lot of different places. Our most active channel right now is probably Facebook. That's where we have the largest audience. And the other thing I would say is, you know, reach out directly. You can reach out to me at guy at nseclusion. org. And I say that really intending, like, if somebody wants to reach out, reach out.

You know, part of our work is, is legislative, part of it's education. We also do a lot of individual support where somebody calls from Colorado and, and, you know, I've, I've you know, talked to, in fact, we had somebody on our, our panel here from, from Colorado. You know, if somebody reaches out to me, you know, I try to help them point them towards resources.

So don't hesitate to reach out for any reason, if there's anything that we can do to, to, to help or, you know, whether you're a, you know, a teacher who is like, Hey, well, you know, we'd like to find ways to reduce and eliminate practices or you're a superintendent or you're you know, a principal, you're a parent, you're a self advocate, you know, we have a community that's really broad. So, yeah, lots of ways to connect and I'm always happy to connect with people.

And you know, I'm looking forward to you know, sharing your your series here as well. And probably, you know, saying, Oh, well, that person was really good. I got to have them over on our show. So