Hello and welcome. My name is Maria Heiler and I'm the Deputy Director of the Washington DC Office and a senior researcher with the Learning Policy Institute. One of my roles here is to direct the Educator Preparation Laboratory, Ed Prep Lab as we call it, is a partnership between Learning Policy Institute and Bank Street Graduate School of Education. It is a growing network of teacher and leader preparation programs across the nation, committed to transforming educator preparation through research, practice, and policy. While we wait a couple minutes for more people to join, feel free to introduce yourselves in the chat box by telling us your name, organization, and where you're from. Hi Kathy from the University of Maryland, good to see that you're on and Kelly from SFUSD. Hi Rod, Dan Brown, good to see you all. I'm glad you're taking the time to join us today. We know that with everything that's going on. Everybody is super busy so we appreciate your time and look forward to engaging in the chat and in the Q&A over the course of the next hour. So let's go ahead and get started. Thank you for joining us today in this one hour webinar. Again, I'd like to thank our partner the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education for their support for this webinar under their leadership of Lynn Gangone. I'd also like to let the audience know that this webinar is being recorded and you'll receive a recording of it via email in a few days. So today we'll be sharing some insights on how educator preparation programs, all of whom today who are with us today are Ed Prep Lab members are adapting during this pandemic. While we will touch on issues of PK-12 teaching and learning, the focus of this webinar and the discussion will be on teacher and principal preparation. Our speakers are national leaders in education preparation from across the United States. They come from three different states, all with varying contexts. And these contexts are constantly shifting, given the nature of COVID-19, as well as the policy responses from states in the area of educator prep. We're talking very nimble and responsive during this time, as such. This conversation is a discussion about how they're adapting educator preparation during this time with the same mission being preparing teachers and leaders for deeper learning and equity. We've organized this webinar a bit differently than those that we've posted in the past with the bulk of the hour be a conversation amongst the panelists. We also have a few polls for you to take over the course of the webinar, and then we'll end with Q&A and some engagement with you all. If you have any questions, please click the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. If you'd like to engage in discussion, you may click the chat button and type in the chat box at the lower right side of your screen. Before we dive into the discussion, I'd like to introduce each of our distinguished panelists briefly. Rebecca Chung is the Program Director of the Principal Leadership Institute. You'll hear a refer to it as PLI at UC Berkeley in the Graduate School of Education, a program that provides leadership preparation, leader induction and leader professional development with a focus on creating more equitable and just schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. Annemarie Francois is a faculty member at UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and the Executive Director of UCLA Center X, where her leadership guides the work of equity based educator preparation, development and support for urban school communities. She's currently the University of California representative on the Commission on Teacher Convention and representative on the LA School Board Curriculum and Instruction Committee. Ira Litt is an Associate Professor at Stanford University and Director of the Stanford Elementary Teacher Education Program. In addition to teacher preparation and elementary education, his focus is on educational equity and the design and purpose of education and schooling as well as the exploration of the educational experience of students often marginalized by the school context. Jennifer Robinson is Professor and Executive Director of the Center of Pedagogy at Montclair State University, the institutional unit that coordinates initial teacher preparation and the simultaneous renewal of teacher education and the school. Her areas of expertise include include the recruitment and retention of students and teachers of color in elementary and higher education and urban education. Kathy Schultz is Dean and Professor at the Senior Boulder School of Education. Prior appointments have included Dean of the School of Education at Mills College and Professor and Director of the Teacher Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work as a scholar has been focused on practices that support teachers working with marginalized populations in high poverty areas. Join me in welcoming virtually our panelists today. As a reminder, if you have any questions, please click the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. If you'd like to engage in discussion, you may click the chat button and type in the chat box at the lower right side of your screen. So before we get started, I'd like to start with a quick poll of the audience around state guidance to get us warmed up. And this is a poll that is for those of you who are engaged in teacher and leader preparation directly. So for all of you folks who are working with universities or in programs that support teacher and leader preparation, we're going to launch a poll for you right now around state guidance. We have 30 seconds. Our poll is about to close and then we'll get the results as well. And for those of you who have been engaged in teacher and leader preparation, it looks like a lot of you have no about the requirements around clinical and the licensing requirement for teacher preparation, but not so much around the leadership. So I'm glad that we have some folks on the panel today who'll be able to speak to leadership preparation and what state guidance is around that. Thank you for engaging in the poll. So I wanted to start off today with all of you all. You are all leaders and your institutions in different roles making critical decisions every day individually, collaboratively with your teams. And it's a heavy burden. It's a heavy load. So I'm curious, just really quickly in a couple words or phrase to get us to hear everyone's voice. What values are you holding as a way to guide your decisions? What centers you and your colleagues as you work in the shipping landscape of educator preparation during COVID-19? Do you want to start us off, Kathy, with a quick. Thank you and good afternoon everyone. In our programs, we center compassion, care and creating humanizing context for learning and teaching. Thank you. Jennifer, do you want to. Sure. Hi everyone. I'd say that we probably focus a lot on extending grace to folks under tremendous stress and pressure. Being humble, as we consider our partners priorities above our own and also providing as much needed support whenever it is within our power and our capability to offer it. Ira. Thanks Maria. Hi everyone. Thanks to our host and thanks to everybody who's joined us. I appreciate the opportunity to be in conversation. And really want to acknowledge all that folks who joined us are doing to uplift others. It's especially important that we're connecting as community in these challenging times. So some words that guide me and my colleagues in our work here at Stanford, our community and relationship, equity and excellence and sustainability and humility. Great. Thank you, Rebecca. Thank you for joining us today. We've been really inspired by John Powell's words and work during this time he's the director of the othering and belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, specifically his words around staying socially connected and building solidarity, while socially distant. I've heard of being physically distanced, but socially connected. And in a Marie. I think that the values that I personally and professionally are holding at this time are humility service, courage and hope. And I think that's what really centering our work right now across the state. Our institution UCLA as well as our colleagues across the state is really we center the humanity of our students, the humanity of each other and the humanity of this communities that we serve. Great. Thank you so much for sharing that because I think also just having folks here from you and what's guiding you will also help to show as a filter for your responses to the question. So thank you. And let's jump in. What guidance has your state provided on licensing and credentialing we saw that there was a range of responses to our poll about what types of guidance they're saying and know about. And how are your educator preparation programs responding to school closures in light of COVID-19. Jennifer, do you want to go ahead and get started. Sure. Thanks, Maria. I would say to begin with, we have as close a relationship as we can with our department of education, our deans and directors meet regularly monthly, but since COVID-19. We've actually started having weekly meetings with our department of ed representatives. And we also try to include all ETS and TPA as well so that we can get a really good idea of what is actually happening and our state, keeping in mind that our State Department of Education is really focused on the P12 students, their families in the community and prioritizing that group first and foremost. And so, you know, I think being as humble and as patient as possible, while we're looking for and hearing from our state representatives about about guidance for teacher and for leader ed. And so we do have guidance and essentially they're giving our educator preparation programs as much discretion as possible and leeway as possible to fulfilling the requirements for critical hours and meeting those licensure requirements. And that extends to our leadership programs as well as some of our other licensure programs. There's a live link that our department of ed partners have provided which provides updated guidance on a regular basis that we can go to the very fact that we're able to meet on a weekly basis and that enables us to ask questions. The department has also put out a survey that all of our EPPs have responded to and so they are definitely on have their fingers on the pulse of what we need. The other is that they have gone to the governor because of course much of our licensure requirements are in law, they're part of regulation. So some of those regulations have to be eased. And so we've our commissioner of education has also received the leeway to make adjustments based upon the needs of the EPPs at this time. But again, we have to be as humble and as patient as we need to be in order to be able to adjust to these closures. So I think I'll stop there and give someone else another chance to. Oh, great. If I have been about what's going on in California, because I was just this morning at a California commission and teacher credentialing meeting that is making decisions and talking about how we're responding right now. And it's a big question right because I've been doing this for a long time and I've never experienced anything like this before. And you've got to be nimble, you've got to be flexible, but you also have to be mindful of what are the things we can change, what are the things we can't change in our on our own authority. And what you don't want to do is give up your core values and you don't want to, you don't want to lower the standards of our profession while you're making these decisions. And California, California actually has been very quick in responding and they have been providing guidance rapidly. They are working. I have to give a shout out to them because they are working over time to make sure that the people on the ground have the information that they need to be informed as they move forward. And we have been very appreciative as Educator Preparation programs to our commission for just their guidance and their support. So in California, we have right now about 80,000 teacher candidates in the pipeline. 26,000 of those are in their first year of teaching or first year of preparation. And so you can imagine between school closures, university campus closures and the closing of testing centers. It's cause a lot of anxiety. And so what we're trying to do with the through the CTC is really provide relief and flexibility the same kind of relief and flexibility that Jennifer spoke up for both the candidates and the program so that programs can have more autonomy in making decisions for the students and the communities that they're serving. This morning they re-voted to approve what's called a virtual term waiver as one of the ways that candidates who are close to completion of their preliminary credential can complete and finish their coursework, their pending coursework fieldwork and assessments during their induction year. It brings up other tensions though when you make these these decisions other issues arise. So we've got to look a little more closely at now at what the induction year would look like now that variable term waivers are an option. We too have been in constant communication with our state representatives the university office of the president and all of the schools because what we're finding is that we've got to draw upon the resources of the university outside of education to help us to navigate this time of COVID with our students. And so I think you should know that UCLA, aside from our induction program, we don't do a whole lot of online or remote learning and teaching. And so I want to commend our candidates and our faculty for very quickly going online and doing the kind of professional development and learning that they've had to do to get this started almost overnight, it seems like. So some of the flexibility around clinical practice is we've been able to modify what constitutes the 600 hours what counts towards 600 hours of clinical practice that's required for the preliminary credential in California. And what we have found is many of our candidates and their mentor teachers are able to do the work. Obviously they're able to do some online teaching with real students, but they're also spending a lot of time together online analyzing teaching videos analyzing student work together. Really refining and and rethinking and looking for how to how how might we change this particular lesson or unit to be offered online and keeping keeping it culturally relevant, keeping those high level practices at the core. And so really I just really been inspired by our candidates. One of the things that I do want to put a shout out to our candidates for doing is we decided that if candidates, many of our candidates are volunteers at what they call the grab and go center. So the Los Angeles Unified School District is serving meals out in the community breakfast and lunch, and they need a volunteers to help do this because I heard they served over a million meals I want to say it's almost like 10 million meal. And so for our candidates who are out there serving the communities in that capacity, we're counting it as clinical practice, because they're making connections with with those families as they are handing out meal assessment. It continues to be a challenge for us primarily because the commission really can't do anything about that you know you've got to get executive order to make changes to anything that is in statute so as the situation evolves, we will continue to talk to our state representatives to see if we can ease up without letting go some of our quality of our program. Rebecca Ira you but you're both also in California. How are you seeing the guidance affecting what your programs look like and what you're actually doing the work in in in schools or in virtual learning spaces. Go ahead Rebecca. Okay, so I want to echo Anna Marie's acknowledgement of California leaders in trying hard to respond to needs in a very diverse state. As a program leader, I want to say this is a really important time for us to be active with our policymakers. Policymakers need to hear from programs that are doing on the ground work because we bring we have our ear to the ground with K 12 partners with our students, and we know their lived experiences and we're trying to enact the policies. And so they need our input and our thoughts in a collaborative spirit. This is back to what we were talking about in terms of the values as well. This is not the time to critique our policymakers I think to the point where we are not also supporting them to develop the best solutions possible. The other piece I just want to mention quickly is this idea of future forward thinking and implications for programs in the future and lamenting what we had or what we had just a month ago. I think this is a real tension that we experienced as program leaders because it's really easy to fall into the idea that our students are not getting something because the environment is not the same. At the same time, they are getting something in field work that no one else has had the opportunity to receive. And I think it's important for us to hold that tension in a way that also shapes our programs after this pandemic. Yeah, how are we innovating during this time that might be far reaching and improving preparation, even post COVID-19. Ira, what about you? I know that some of your candidates are actually still able to work with their mentor teachers and engage in clinical practice. So what does that look like and what are you doing at Stanford in terms of responding to the state guidance? Yeah, thanks for the question. I want to underscore what my colleagues have offered in terms of appreciating all the colleagues, state leaders, community leaders and all the work that they're doing. I also want to recognize that for all of us and for all of them, we should not forget that we are all living in an emergency and in a crisis, which is essentially foundational to all of this creative, imaginative, important work that we're doing. And we can't lose sight of the fact that we're all living through an emergency while we're being challenged to rise to this occasion. And I think if we can remember to keep that at the center, it will help us to underscore the humanity of this moment that, again, several of my colleagues shared. So I just wanted to add that to the conversation. It doesn't diminish the challenge and the opportunities that we have, but I think it'll help us to care for one another while we're doing this challenging and difficult work. So you asked about some really concrete examples of ways in which our candidates have been fortunate to be able to stay engaged during these unusual times. And I have to say it's actually been one of the bright spots for us, the degree of connectivity that our candidates have maintained with their schools, their cooperating teachers, their students, families and communities have really been strong and it's been a highlight. It was a puzzle for us initially. How would this look? How would we foster those relationships? But we basically built on the strength of the relationships we have with schools and districts already. We presume that our candidates are contributing members of the professional staff of those schools and districts. And, you know, we tested out that proposition in this moment by asking our colleagues, how did they want to essentially view and utilize the candidates in our program. They were very quick to return a very similar orientation inviting them in as important colleagues in this work. So our candidates are actively participating probably more actively than they were before in grade level meetings and school level meetings. Our candidates bring a lot of resources to schools and communities. Many of them are more facile with educational technology than some of the master teachers that they're working with. So they have some of that comfort and expertise to offer. Schools need some things that extra resources provide. The need for schools to be in communication with families is very high. I think all of us would say that it normally should be really high, but the demand right now is especially strong. And so having extra folks to reach out to be in touch with families to talk to youth and their parents simultaneously on a regular basis to check in about sort of human experience along with academic experience has been one of the places where our candidates I think have shined. And then when it comes to some academic kinds of work, I've really been impressed and excited with some of the inventiveness and the creativity. We have some high school English teacher candidates who are having their students do photo journal essays around lived experience right through stay at home. So taking photos, building websites where you're both, you know, writing and using artistic expression to write to be in the moment and make it authentic and engaging. We have elementary candidates who are doing some fabulous online video art lessons that again their students are finding really engaging. So it's a way to bring them into the work and then they can share the work that they're doing by taking a quick photograph and posting it, which again makes it kind of a vibrant, right, shareable experience for others. I mean, I could go on with other experiences, but I think that also contributes to some uplift within our own community because as somebody else said there's a real sense of loss amongst our candidates. This is not what they signed up to do. It's not what any of us signed up to do. And so while we're helping them grieve through that process of loss and letting go. It's also important that we find moments to celebrate and share joy in the work. So those are just a few things that come to mind. I would like to highlight that especially I think now could be a key time for programs. I know that many of you who have strong relationships. I know this is true at Montclair with their partner district. That is what's getting through the relationships that they're have, but it's also a time if some relationships need mending the idea that these preparation programs are really resources and can really be sources of support and personal personnel power to help the K-12 students is really important. Kathy, what's going on in Colorado? Well, thank you. So our state also very quickly told us that they would trust our judgment on candidates readiness. And so they basically said it sounds like like New Jersey if we recommend our teachers for licensure, they trust the process. Again, like New Jersey, we actually meet as deans and directors of teacher education programs from across the state and weekly with our Colorado Department of Higher Education and Department of Education and it's been a really wonderful collaborative process. They've been, we've been hearing from them about all the sort of next steps like when is practice going to be given and what happens if it's not given this year, can student teachers start. And again, I think they've been nimble and have been working with our state legislature in much of the same ways. We did approach this much like everybody's been talking about and went to our partner districts and partner schools immediately and said, What can we do and so we did sort of center the needs of the schools and the teachers as we sort of thought about what our own student teachers should be doing, but sort of structurally some of the kinds of things that haven't been mentioned yet are are things that structures that we put into place. For instance, in our secondary humanities program, we replace the Colorado teacher evaluation rubric which usually we have to fill out at the end to evaluate our student teachers and recommend them for licensure as an alternative final student teaching assessment tool that made a lot more sense during these times. So the tool is designed to address this reality that we couldn't give them the same kind of personal observation and feedback right now that we usually do. And so we asked the candidates to think, act and reflect on a particular area of growth that they noticed in their own teaching that and the ways that they've been able to explore this in this virtual environment and how what they're doing now supports their aims and teaching for equity and justice, which of course, like I think all of our programs is at the center of our teacher education program. So candidates are writing two reflective memos to capture their experience and then their field coaches or their supervisors are meeting with them to help them sort of reflect on their journals and reflections to implement and to sort of think forward into the future. We're seeing across institutions the creative use of supervisors now who would generally be in the field and in classrooms observing and doing evaluations really being used for one-on-one check-ins for these assessments. I think that's really important to think about how we engage in the regular business of teacher and leader preparation given the constraints. I'd like to turn to the audience right now again to do another poll. We want to ask you folks who are again directly engaged in teacher and leader preparation. We wanted to ask you about some of your practices and how you're engaging with your coursework and what types of works being done as you move to online and virtual learning. You have 30 seconds to complete the poll. All right, so good to hear that most people are feeling somewhat prepared and well-prepared to move online, and it looks like people are still engaging in clinical experiences and this new virtual reality, so that's good, the majority. And it's excellent that Canada is finding new ways to contribute. I think this idea of resources and being able to support our K-12 students is a really important contribution that preparation can make at this time. So that's encouraging to hear. So I wanted to turn and really drill down a lot of the registrants asked about equity in their questions. All of you are engaged in programs that have a clear commitment around equity and social justice. So I want to ask, how are you centering equity first with your candidates? We know that there's a disproportionate impact of this on our candidates of color and those candidates from lower SES homes. And tied to that, it's also this idea of social-emotional learning and trauma-informed practice. So I'd love to hear from you all about what are some of the practices and how are the ways that you're still centering those core commitments to equity and social-emotional learning in your program. So UCLA, like all of the programs are presented here, social justice and equity is just a foundational value that lives and breathes in everything that we do in our program. And what we find is that, especially right now as we have our students remotely, we're teaching with them remotely, that modeling the kind of culturally relevant and equitable practices that we hope that our candidates will engage in and K-12 schools is still kind of foundational to how we're communicating with them and giving them practices that they can hold on to. And at the same time, similar to what I mentioned before, we're also really keenly aware that our candidates are struggling to meet the physical, emotional and psychological needs of their own family, even as they're trying to complete their program and trying to be there for their peers in their classroom. So we want to always be mindful of honoring that. And so what we're doing is trying to shift some of our coursework so that it lifts up addressing trauma in this moment in explicit kind of ways. In another instance in our principal leadership institute, the assignments, their core assignment is usually to take something from their classroom, from their school, and do kind of an inquiry around it, and they have multiple assignments that's connected to that. Right now, those assignments are really focused on as a school leader. And then you're supporting and addressing the trauma that the teacher, students, parents, and families are experiencing now. And then how will that inform once you go back to normal, which we all know is never going to be normal. Once you go back, how will those practices translate into the years to come. We're opening up spaces for our candidates to share their lived experiences, both academically, personally, professionally, and helping them, giving them space so that they can talk through their own trauma. Because if they can't talk through their own trauma and they're holding on to it, it doesn't matter what we're teaching them online. It doesn't. They're filtering all of that from a space of anxiety, a space of frustration. And at the same time, though, we're also mindful of the fact that our education faculty and teacher candidates, we're not social workers, and we're not clinicians. And so what we've really had to do is, and fortunately for us UCLA has some world class counseling psychological service mental health and wellness units on campus. So what we're doing is we're reaching out to them and having them come into our classrooms to teach us as in professional development and with our candidates about how to take care of ourselves and to take care of our students in this time, time of COVID, COVID. And that could take the, it's taken the shape of webinars, guest lecturers, making accessible online resources that used to just be you were only able to access them if you were at UCLA and making them more open for the field to use. And I also know that my colleagues at in the Cal State system, they've made more formal agreements with their counseling offices to co construct learning experiences for for their students. And then lastly, I think one of our core ways of helping young people that are going into the profession, think about trauma informed practice is we push them to take care of themselves, like self care is really important. So we have them doing meditation, we have them getting presentations, particularly around. And you talked about equity a little bit before we know that many of our candidates come from them grew up in those the most underserved communities that we currently serve. And they have a different load that they're carrying than some of our candidates. So we're doing some of these work in infinity groups to so you know our African American student group or Latino student group might come together and do meditation or yoga. And during that time they can discuss and talk about the different way trauma is affecting them as teachers of color, or them as as women. So, Matt, you know, take the, the, it looks like community meetings, coffee hours over zoom book clubs, things like that. Really connecting. Rebecca. Yeah, I would like to add on. And just say that before this pandemic arrived. We were already investigating issues of principle and leader burnout and resilience in a profession that already has a high burnout we have a whole nother layer now to think about related to social emotional learning and specifically we've been thinking about this concept of critical resilience, of ourselves as individuals situated in systems, and what the physical cognitive and collective dimensions are of staying critically resilient and leaders staying critically resilient. So I point that out because I think that that that work continues in an accelerated format now under the shelter in place order. And I think one of the ways that we have to exhibit and model critical resilience is to also model how transparently how the larger culture, the larger issues at play in our country are coming and manifesting inside our programs and in our schools. The most obvious example of this would be the rise again I won't say the new rise because it's happened many times in our history of xenophobia towards Asian Americans, you know, whether it's people that are being personally attacked, whether it's fear for family members, whether they're undocumented and also facing xenophobia. There are many that's the most obvious example that we have and we have to talk about those things and certainly as an Asian American leadership preparation director I need to talk about those things. And so a lot of it is modeling. I told my students that I'm experiencing a lot of what I call silent outrage outrage in my head, because my children are ever present in my house. And I don't have the space, the safety space for example, to really say what I need to say sometimes or that I'm feeling sometimes, and to build a model that as a leader, and then to give permission to others to be able to say yes I'm also experiencing silent outrage, or maybe I can't let it be silent anymore. And also this issue of xenophobia is just one of many other oppressions that are ongoing in our in our country, and that have been here that are only more exacerbated potentially by this situation and so I think it's important for us to understand what it means for certain communities when we ask them to wear facial coverings, for instance, and we think about issues of racial profiling, whether it's what we're thinking about your legal status, or your language fluency, whatever it might be I think it has to be braided and integrated into our daily work as programs and to be ever present of how these larger systemic issues penetrate deeply into our daily work and into our daily interactions. Can I just, I appreciated that so much, Rebecca, because as you know having these kind of hard and courageous conversations around equity, and how the very things you just spoke of the fear of tackling and addressing them head on. We've dealt with this in teacher at administrator at education preparation programs for a really long time. And now it's not an option. We must have these conversations with ourselves and with our students, because it's all around us. And so I've been telling my staff that let's look for the opportunity that this is presenting us right because we can fall into the rabbit hole of all the problems COVID has presented, but I think that this has required all of us to confront to name and confront the kinds of inequities and injustices that so many communities face that we have chosen not to in the path. Thank you for those comments, Rebecca. I want to just add to the conversation because I like the idea that you're saying Rebecca, we as faculty as leaders have to model. What we're hoping that our students will will learn from us and I think as they watch us. I've had a lot more conversations and interactions, not only with current students but even former students coming back and contacting me and reaching out and us having conversations because because they're asking those questions, you know, how do how do I deal with this and I'm asking back to, you know, asking those same questions of them as well. I just want to build on what you were saying in terms of some of our faculty, many of our adjuncts some of our former students are coming and they're they're conducting workshops and leadership speaker series weekly series and a lot of the the content of those speaker series is all about social emotional learning so creating a socially and emotionally rich school environment is one of the topics. And then also talking about the response, you know, addressing student mental health and counseling needs is one of the other, you know, sessions that our former students are offering. Also, I don't know if you're aware of this but crisis planning there are actually FEMA certificate options and so one of our adjuncts is actually offering that so that students can actually get access to this information about how do you how do you prepare and how do you respond to crisis. And we do have some who are talking about special education programs and services in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and and certainly one of our faculty members is also offering best practices for serving English language learners and their families during this time so a lot of what we're doing is trying to provide services and opportunities for our students to learn from the current situation. We also are encouraging students to work with one faculty person who is maybe they're focusing on a particular interest area around the pandemic that they want to go deeper and learn from and and they're all getting credit for all of this too so we've got many of our candidates are attending these sessions so that they can learn not only from the faculty but from each other as well. I also want to highlight the fact that we have a very strong relationship with our school districts and we've provided a lot of online workshops drawing upon many of our faculty on campus from counseling from the psychology department even our school slide program offering workshops for our current experienced teachers and administrators in our partner districts and they have been flooding those workshops because we're trying to provide the kind of support that we know that our teachers need our administrators need to help them and also our partnership with our statewide organization to provide computer and technology support are providing free workshops for New Jersey educators across any any districts workshops as well as live support to teachers so we're trying to give as many of our educators access to the kind of supports that they need in order to be able to do this work and again I want to underscore what everyone's been saying and and that is it's not it's not difficult to bring up the issues of equity in this environment because it's right on our faces you know and and it's giving us an opportunity to to reinforce the things that perhaps students are reading in in some articles or both chapters but now they're experiencing it and they're seeing it for themselves and we're hoping and and knowing that they're not turning a blind eye to what they're seeing around them and we're pointing that out. Thank you Jennifer I think this idea of this really being an opportunity. What I'm hearing is these different partnerships this way of being cross discipline of really circling around our candidates and the K 12 community during this time is so important. I'm looking at the time and I know that we want to take some of our audience questions. But I do want to know. Kathy Ira, what are you thinking about in terms of the future, like what is, you know, we're dealing with a lot of what's going on right now. But when you think about this summer when you think about the fall. What are your plans and how are you thinking about that so we'll we'll end with those two and then you turn to a few audience questions. So I'll say first, just to underline some of the points that my colleagues have said that we're trying to use this as an opportunity to do creative things that will last longer than this crisis but into the future. Our partner schools interestingly have been enthusiastic when we've been reaching out to them about student teaching placements next fall. Of course, nobody's decided what the neither universities nor K 12 schools, but we're talking with them about what their needs are and again, you know, as we've said again and again, we're trying to center the needs of our schools as we make these decisions, but we have been surprised by how enthusiastic they've been at this point, our districts are saying that they're planning for an in person start, but everybody needs to be online and so as Jen was saying, we're also offering courses this summer on teaching online critical pedagogies for teaching online to our K 12 teachers so that we can support them both in person but through coursework over the summer. We're one of the new innovations that we're thinking about is instead of having a student teacher start in the middle of August, we're going to try to see if it's possible for them to meet their teachers in the summer and so they can work together to do some of the planning that they're all doing and because so many of us are sitting in our offices or bedrooms in front of computer screens. We want to take advantage of that time and and and make the connections even stronger. So those are just a couple of things, you know, I guess we just want to be responsive. We want to think about how what the students are learning will help them and go plan that help them in their future and we want to again foreground equity and justice and all that we do. It's all three. Thanks for those ideas. Let me just add one quick thing I know Maria you're want to give our audience members an opportunity to ask some questions to I think I think we can't forget in this really challenging unique moment that we know a lot about quality practice principles and foundational knowledge and ideas and that can travel across context and we can't we we can't jettison all that we know all of our professional knowledge and expertise because the context has changed so as we're figuring out ways to retool to meet the moment to be creative and innovative. There are things that we know and we need to rely on principles of effective practice, our core mission and our core values, the aspirations we have for our candidates for educators in the field. And for the students families and communities that they serve and I think if we use those principles and foundational ideas and broad aspirations we have. We won't have we it'll be a big lip but we won't have trouble coming up with creative solutions just like some of the ones that Kathy shared. I think we're, we're potentially, you know in dangerous territory when we're thinking about what from our sort of current model and design because we need to start in person student teaching late or because we have a little less contact time should we just take 80% of what we do because we have 80% of the calendar year I think that's not the right way to think about this complicated design project it's what do we know about effective educator preparation clinical work matters a lot there's a lot there's a strong research base for that so we have to be creative about what clinical work looks like. Right, we, we know that a depth of knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge is really valuable for helping future teachers know how to be effective in their work. There's lots of ways to do that and the local context in which we've each been preparing educators is different than it is from one another but we're all doing a terrific job. And that's true across all the educators who are on this call folks who are working internationally in different contexts, and I think actually if we remind ourselves of that. We can see that there really can be productive positive creative ways to get to a similar end that we have aspirations for even if the pathways a little bit different. Absolutely well said. That's how we opened up the webinar is that you've always been committed these programs to high quality teacher and leader preparation so how does that continuing in this context. So we have a question from Samantha Vargas a program assistant at Carnegie Corporation of New York and she's asking in what ways were you under prepared for this context and how can we learn from this. And what can funders do to create resources to help. I'll jump in. I think we were under prepared as a country because we had no idea what it would mean for schools to close down and what it would mean to have this new kind of education. And of course, what I'm worried about is that we're not studying what's working right now, and we're so much of this and you know everybody saying it's emergency education it's not online education, but we're so much in the midst of it we're not figuring out what's really working well and so funders could help us study that and could help us really work in in a qualitative way as well as a survey kind of way, and look very carefully at what's worked and really collate what we can do in the future. I think the other thing that people are really looking for now are high quality videos of classroom practice because we know people aren't in classrooms are in schools to be leaders, we're not going to have. We need resources to sort of analyze critically analyze what's going on. And one of those resources is from National Board for professional teaching standards they have the atlas library of accomplished teachers that's a great resource for videos of teachers. One other thing I might add just bringing back our you know conversation about equity and access you know we know that a lot of our candidates may not have equitable access to the kind of resources that distance learning may require. And that's true of some of the schools and districts that we partner with. So I think building broader coalitions that might include funders, public policymakers and I he's could really help us lift everyone along the way and make sure that we're not losing anyone as we, you know as we work towards this, you know, unusual, but creative future. I was just going to add that, in addition to what Kathy and Ira said I think it's important for us to engage young people and parents and community in what they think schools should be imagined to be in the future after this situation and so I think we need to. It would be great to see funding supporting that kind of work and engagement with the young people who are most affected in the situation. All right, I think we have time for one quick other question with responses from y'all. A lot of people are really interested in concerned how future candidates are learning to work with students with disabilities in this context so wondering if any of you can speak briefly and succinctly about some of the work that you're doing with your candidates. I'll just underscore I think our candidates are doing a fabulous job as well as their teachers and schools at finding terrific opportunities for learning both for teacher candidates. So, taking, for example, small groups or one on one opportunities to engage with either ELs or students with specific disabilities. So, one knowledge and foundational work that we already know trying to find ways to differentiate finding different ways to engage providing additional opportunities additional supports for assignments and having our teacher candidates provides that for schools and districts and it's part of why I think they're enthusiastic to have them there now and are looking forward to having them with a work with them next fall. I would agree with Ira and I would shift the question a little bit, because I think we need to be more creative in this moment on how we support parents of students with disabilities to maximize the home learning that's going on right now. I mean, you were fortunate enough in Center X to have a parent project that is, has coalitions of parents that they meet with regularly online. And while that's helpful, there's also the question of what about the parents that don't have access to be part of the community. So, I think that looking forward, we need to pay more attention to how we support parents as school changes, because when school changes for this student, home life changes for the parents. Unfortunately, that's all the time that we have today for questions, but there's such an interest and there is an opportunity for you provide feedback for the webinar so there's topics that you want to go in deeper if there's a desire to continue to have these conversations that we really see as emergent. So we're not saying we have the answers that we're just higher lighting practices that folks are doing in these conversations, please do share that if there's a continued interest, we'll be happy to bring folks together to do that. Please join me in thanking our panelists virtually. Thank you again for sharing your valuable information about how you're adapting during COVID-19. I think the way that we talk together and think together is most important for meeting the needs of our K-12 students through high quality preparation for teachers and leaders. So we appreciate your time, especially when you're busy doing the work. I'd also like to extend the thank you to our partner AACPE for co-sponsoring this webinar with us. So we have some resources we'd like to share. Some of them we spoke about today. On the next couple of slides you'll see some links. I just want you to know that the links will be up. They're already up on our website, so don't still need to take a picture with your phone or a screenshot. They're available for you right now. A link to this recording of the webinar as well as all the resources we've shared today will be sent out to everyone via email. And finally, I'd like to mention that a survey that I mentioned before will appear in your window when you leave the webinar. We'd appreciate your feedback, especially if this was helpful and you'd like to dive deeper into some additional comments. What would be helpful for you all is we do the good work of meeting the needs of all of our students. We hope you have a wonderful day and thank you again for joining us.


Good morning, afternoon or evening, wherever you may be, this is your iconoclastic professor of psychology, Sam Baknin, the author of Malignance of Love, Narcissism, you know what, revisited. And today we are going to discuss yet another controversial topic, the only topics I like to discuss. And this one is, should I stay in an abusive relationship? Let me give you a hint. If you tolerate abuse, better than you tolerate loneliness, maybe you should. But the answer is not that simple. Like everything else in psychology, there are layers upon layers upon layers. People are very much like onions. They make you cry and the more you peel them, the less you know about them. So should you stay in an abusive relationship? To answer this question we need to have a look at what reasons people give for staying in abusive relationships. Actually, we have multiple studies. We ask many people, tens of thousands, why do you stay? Why do you stay on? Why don't you live? Why don't you break up? Why don't you divorce? Why don't you just move on? And people gave dozens of reasons for staying on. Some of them inane, some of them funny, some of them serious and all of them worthy of consideration, which is what I'm about to do right now. And so abusive relationships have been described in the 70s and 80s. That was a period when the awareness of abuse had started. And actually, ironically, it started with substance abuse. Even the concept of codependency usually referred to a psychological condition where a person is manipulated by another person who has an addiction. Originally, codependents were called co-alcoholics, I'm kidding you not. But then gradually, the very concept of a co-alcoholic had evolved and had come to encompass anyone who stays in a relationship because of dependency issues. And so, co-alcoholics became codependent. And in the 70s, when we started to study abusive relationships, we discovered that people realize actually that there's no point in staying together. Most people know when the relationship is dead, when it's hopeless, when it's going nowhere and when you have nothing more in common with the person you're with.  Another person, if I didn't love with someone else, I mean you fell out of love. There's so many dynamics that undermine the cohesion, the loyalty, and the commitment that are the foundations of trust in a relationship. And yet, even though people are fully aware that the only right thing to do is to say goodbye amicably and to part ways, even so they remain. They stay on, they shoulder on. And when we ask them why, some of them describe fear, others, laziness, most commonly, nostalgia. These are all extremely bad reasons to stay together, but people do. And so let's review some of the answers. Strangely, the most common answer is, I still love him or her. So I'm going to use him and her, but the genders are interchangeable. Whenever I talk about a man, it refers clearly to a woman. Whenever I talk about a woman, vice versa. So just for the sake of the flow of the text. So one of the most common answers is, I still love him. Now love is a very powerful emotion. It harks back to early childhood. It regresses us in some respects. Our partners acquire parental qualities. And it's very painful to give up on love. And very often this love is real. It's not imaginary or delusional or fantastic. It's not infatuation. It's not limerence. It's after years of togetherness, sometimes decades, and it's very real. But what people refuse to accept is that you can love someone and not like them. You can love him, but not like him. You can love him and find him obnoxious. You can love him and you're not able to share your life with him. Love is an emotion. Love is not a recipe for cohabitation or commitment or a long-term relationship. Love is one condition. It's not even a necessary condition. Not definitely not a sufficient condition. It's there. It's more like a spice than a main dish. And to confuse and to think, to believe that if you love someone, that's enough. That's all it takes to stay with him. It's a serious mistake. If you've tried everything and it had failed, your love is not a reason to stay. It's very often a reason to leave, actually. If you love someone, you set them free. If he's not good for you, you're not good for him. If he makes you unhappy, you make him unhappy. And if you love him, you should release him, let him find someone who would make him happy. The second most common reason given was because of blackmail. Emotional blackmail. Sentences like, you can't do this to me. I sacrificed my life for you. I gave up opportunities for you. Think of everything we've been through. After everything I've done for you, this is what you do to me. These comments constitute emotional blackmail. These are clear signs that you are in the throes, in the vortex of a toxic relationship. No partner who loves you would emotionally blackmail you in order to make you stay. That's a series red flag. Sentences like this are about control, about addiction, about co-dependency, or dependency. Not about love. There's no love there. So the first two major reasons for staying together are absolutely wrong for you. And then the next most common reason is aversion to failure. It's like if you give up on the relationship, if you break up, you admit defeat. You had failed somehow. It's a personal failure. Some people, especially grandiose people, they can't handle personal failure. They equate being lovable with being successful. They grew up in environments where they had received conditional love based on performance. So if they don't perform, they cannot be loved, and if they cannot be loved, they will never be loved by anyone. We'll come to that a bit later when we talk about catastrophizing. There is no question that when you start a long-term committed relationship, the idea is for it to last, and to prosper, and to thrive, and to allow you to grow and evolve and become a better version of yourself. Those are the intentions, but intentions and plans often are frustrated by others, including your intimate partner, or by circumstances, environment, events, changes, or other people. You could look at a breakup as a new beginning, not an end. You could look at your decision to abandon the relationship as a success, success at overcoming your resistance, success at loving yourself, success at giving yourself another chance, a second chance, a third chance, success at trying, trying resiliently, fearlessly in the face of adversity. That to me sounds a lot like success. In the back of everyone's mind, there is the belief that they got what they had deserved. They had the intimate partner coming. They reached their level of competence. It's like the Peter principle. You climb to the highest point you can. So there's this implicit assumption, this hidden assumption that your current partner is the best you could do. You can do no better, because if you could do better, you would have done better. So your current partner is a seal, an imprimatur, a seal of approval saying, well, this is the best you can do. And so if this is the best you can do, you won't find anyone better. When the relationship goes bad, you have anyhow you have troubles with self-esteem and self-confidence.  So anyhow you're faced with issues of self-esteem and so on. And if you think that in terms of splitting, this is my partner or no partner, this is the best I can do, everything else is the worst. So if you think this way, if you tell yourself, I will never be able to find anything better. I have reached my apex, that's it. Then of course you will be setting yourself up for failure. If you believe that you can find no one better, then of course you should stay in the relationship because that's as good as it gets. But that's nonsense, it's counterfactual, it's not true. In all likelihood you're going to find other people, other partners and they're going to be compatible with you the same way or even more than your current intimate partner. However, there is a caveat here. Relationship failure is a good prognosticator, a good predictor of future relationship failure. Generally in psychology past behavior, patterns of the past predict almost perfectly the future. So dissolved relationship in your past predicts dissolved relationships in the future. For example, the rate of divorce in first marriages is between 40% and 50%. But the rate of divorce in second marriages is closer to 70% and the rate of divorce in third marriages is upwards of 80%. In other words, the more frequently you get married, the more frequently you have long term committed relationships, the more likely you are to fail. It has nothing to do with the quality of your future intimate partners or even with your compatibility with them. It has to do with a lack of skills or problems with skills of intimacy and relationships. For example, inability to compromise or rigidity or lack of acceptance of the other or passive aggression. You need to delve deep into the question of why did I fail in this relationship? Why did I find myself in an abusive relationship with an abuser? What wrong choices have I made and what were my contributions to this pathological dynamics that had led me here? Because if you don't do this soul searching, your chances of repeating the same mistakes and ending the same way are larger actually. They increase with second and third attempts. People will give the most crazy reasons for staying together. One common reason, shockingly, is I love his parents. I love my in-laws. There is anyhow a fear of losing the social circle that you had built with your intimate partner. You are afraid to lose your mutual friends and so on. But relationships with in-laws sometimes are very important. They serve as parental substitutes. This is especially true if you never had a good enough parents in the first place or if your parents were dead physically or absent or selfish or dysfunctional or mentally ill in some ways. His parents become your parents.  It is not in vain that the term is daughter-in-law. Of course, it's giving up on these newly found parental figures, this newly found mother and newly found father. It's difficult. And the period immediately after the separation is impossible to navigate. You have to stay in touch with people you like and avoid him, avoid your intimate partner. And sometimes it can't be done. It's a package deal.  It's like losing your parents for a second time. So it's a bit of a crazy reason to stay in a relationship, to shoulder on, to stay on in an abusive relationship because his mother and father are like you. But people give this as a reason. They give the opposite as a reason. They say, my family likes him. My parents like him. My sister likes him. My brother likes him. It's like your siblings and your parents, they matter. You don't matter. You are there to gratify them. You're there to make them happy. You're there to satisfy them. And yes, it's called people pleasing. When you resort to these people, to your parents or to your siblings and ask them for support and for help and for advice, they tell you the breaking up is a bad idea. They tell you you should stay on. They tell you you should persevere. You should try to make it work. You should fix this. If they like the person you're spending your life with and you don't like him, it's a seriously bad idea to rely on their guidance and direction. They may love you, but they're very likely to be affected by their own prejudices and inclinations and proclivities. Just ignore them. Do your thing. Ultimately, they'll come around and they will understand your decision. Same goes for mutual friends. In the years, every couple develops a social circle, a group of mutual friends. These mutual friends can be very, very intimate, very supportive, like a safety network. A safety net. And so when you break up, you're very likely to lose many of them. Some of them were his friends more than they were your friends. So you can lose many of them, but those you lose, they were never your friends. They were your friends because they were his friends. They were trying to please him somehow or to cater to his needs or to spy on you, frankly, flying monkeys. So don't regret the mutual friends you lose when you break up, when you leave, when you abandon an abusive relationship. These friends that you lose probably have never been your friends. So don't hesitate in making the final decision to stay or go based on whether you're going to lose mutual friends. So these are very common reasons people give as to why they're staying. And many of them describe internal dynamics as a reason to stay. For example, many people say, I'm staying because he's really trying. He says sorry all the time. He recognizes his past mistakes, actions and behaviors. He apologizes. He says he will make it up to me. So he's really trying kind of. Well breaking news, saying sorry is the easy part. And many actions are not mistakes but choices. So some actions and behaviors, they can be swept away by a convincing apology. You need not accept an apology as a substitute for appropriate, respectful behavior.  He doesn't mean he doesn't mean them. It's just a speech act. It's perfunctory. So the root of a problem is his behavior. Don't don't pay attention to what he says, pay attention to what he does and how he acts. Apologies, feelings, sorry, promises. They are not the guarantors of a stable and happy relationship. Promises like I promise I will change. I can go to counseling this time. I will do this or I will do that. Don't let it affect your decision. These are hollow words in the vast majority of cases, you have to base your decision on facts and actions, not on apologies and promises.  And so promises and apologies are an integral part of a phenomenon widely known erroneously as gaslighting. Now there's been a recent article in the Washington Post about gaslighting and I'll dedicate a separate video to it because it supports everything I had been saying about gaslighting for years now.  But if the apologies and the promises are intended to skew your perception of reality, then they do constitute gaslighting. Gradually, you come to concede yourself as unlovable, as unworthy of love. In arguments with your intimate partner, pay attention to what he's saying.  Why? Because it's never true, it's never real. Anything that drives you away from reality and makes you doubt your judgment from a position of authority, anything like that is a form of gaslighting. It undermines your reality testing, your self-esteem, your failing relationship, anyhow makes you feel that something is wrong with you, especially people with auto-plastic defenses, people who tend to blame themselves for things going wrong, people who tend to assume responsibility and to people who try to please others. In any case, a failure is an injury, a challenge to self-esteem. You don't need your intimate partner to add to this, to add to this by constantly telling you that something is wrong with you. Such a partner is not your friend, he's not your friend and he may not deserve whatever love you may be giving him, whatever support and help, he may not deserve your presence in his life and so some of you say, I'm staying in the relationship because I've invested so much in it, this is known as the sunk cost fallacy. The sunk cost fallacy is a well-known phenomenon in gambling and in stock investing. Gambleers put money on the table, they lose it and they say, well I'm going to double my bet and I'm going to get all my money back. Similarly, people who invest in stocks and the stock tanks, the price collapses, they buy more of the stock and they say, well now I've averaged the purchase price, lowered the purchase price so my chances of coming out on top and making a profit are much higher. That's nonsense, that's the sunk cost fallacy. You never throw bad money after good money.  If your relationship seems doomed to fail, don't let your past investment blind you or disorient you or misdirect you. Nothing is lost. Everything you've been through, everything you've gone through, everything you've invested in, you ripped the dividends and these dividends are known as experience. It's a learning opportunity so don't mourn and lament the past.    But staying together because you've been together, that's nonsensical. That's nonsensical. If the relationship is bad, dysfunctional, abusive, any minute spent there is a minute wasted. You're just adding to the cost and you're sinking deeper. That's why it's the sunk cost fallacy. So your relationship is limping along, give it the coup de grace. Just get rid of it, break free and do not feel guilty. You don't owe anyone to be his hostage. You don't owe him to be his hostage. You're not a prisoner. This is not a hostage exchange or negotiation. This is not a ransom situation. You've given all you could, he has taken all he could, he had given all he could however limited and one of the things he had been giving you is perhaps abuse because that's what he does, that's who he is. Whichever the case may be, cut loose, put an end to it. Don't look back. Looking back is dangerous because you don't see the road ahead and you may end up in an accident so don't look back, look forward. And the same, a close cousin of the sunk cost fallacy is the future cost fallacy. It's like you're saying, oh my God, if I leave him now, if I break up, I would have to move. I would have to leave my home, I would have to find a new place, I'd have to furnish it, I'd have to decorate it and this would take ages and it would be extremely uncomfortable, etc, etc. Yes, you're right about all this but it's a future cost fallacy. Everything comes with the cost. There is the cost of moving and refurbishing and furnishing and decorating. That's one cost and there is a cost of staying in a relationship where you are unhappy, unhappy daily, where you are sobbing in your room, where you have no sex, where you hate yourself and the men with you and your intimate partner and where things are moving nowhere, going nowhere fast. That's also a cost. Now which of these two I ask you is the higher cost. It's a no-brainer. And then you say, okay, another type of cost is that I have to date. And the dating world is assessable, especially now with dating apps and with men's propensity for casual sex. I mean, they're not interested in commitment and investment. They just want to have casual sex, one night stands and move on to the next woman and if you're a man, you complain about women, that they're bossy and they're aggressive and they are disloyal and they are gold diggers, opportunistic and manipulative. Each, I mean, the genders, it's not a good place nowadays, not a good time. There's a agenda war. The genders dislike each other intensely and I'm using the understatement of the year. Yeah, the dating scene nowadays is intimidating. It's painful. It's dangerous. And if you were able to avoid it, if you're able to avoid it, best avoid it, best shun it, best not date, absolutely. But again, it's a question of cost versus cost. Getting back on the dating scene is not easy, especially if you have kids, especially if you're divorced, we just got out of a long-term, very traumatizing relationship. And especially if you're above the age of 18, because studies show that the attractiveness of women declines precipitously after age 18, shockingly. So it's difficult. It's difficult to date and best avoid it. But the alternative also has a cost. Everything is a cost opportunity thing, cost reward. The alternative is to stay in a relationship which is the equivalent of a cemetery and renders you a corpse, a zombie. Do you want to live this way?  Isn't dating the lesser evil and lesser risk? And no one, you don't have to rush. You don't have to rush into dating, into relationships, into monogamy. You can play the field for a while. You can meet different people, no pressure, set no goals. See how it goes. It may not go, not lying to you. The chances are 50-50. And after a certain age, the chances are actually 80-20, that you will remain single, that you will not find another intimate partner. But my view is better to not have an intimate partner, better to be single and alone for life than to be in an abusive relationship. And that is true even if you consider your partner to be a great catch. Like he's perfect, he's good looking, he's a great career, he's a provider, he makes a fortune. He buys me nice stuff. He's seductive. These are superficial things. These are superficial things. You can't build a solid relationship on this kind of quality, some of them transient. He is a great catch on paper. Or he may be even a great catch, some other partner, but not for you. You're not happy with him. He's abusing you. You're at each other's throats. The situation gets worse by the day. You may be cheating on each other. You may be adversely affecting the health and well-being of your children. So what if he looks good? So what if he has millions in the back? So what if he buys you a Ferrari every time he beats you to a pulp? I've seen such cases. These are not the criteria for a relationship. You may redefine yourself as a sugar baby or a gold digger, and then embark on a transactional arrangement with a gentleman of means.  Clearly there's a name for that, but you know, I'm not judging anyone. It's a possible arrangement and many, many women end up being exactly that in today's world where men are interested mainly and lately only in sex. So don't remain in a relationship because you think you can do no better and your partner is a great catch. Some people are inert. They prefer stability to any change, even a change for the better. They feel safe in a comfort zone. This comfort zone could include domestic violence even, life-threatening domestic violence, but it's a comfort zone. Why? Because it's predictable. It's stable. Some people are infantile, pitter-pans in the case of men, childlike waifs in the case of borderlines, damsels in distress. These people look for mother figures, father figures, rescuers, fixers, saviors and messiahs.  Your partner is the rock. You can rely on your partner 1,000%. That's actually an excellent reason to break up. An excellent reason to break up because he is retarding your growth. He is encouraging your immaturity. He wants you to be dependent on him.  This is the shared fantasy with the narcissist. This is my concept of dual mothering or dual mothering, where both of you play mother to each other. You're not allowing each other to grow, to evolve, to mature, to become grown-ups and adults.  Someone who would insist that you have boundaries, self-love, self-respect, and that you act as a mature grown-up with all the chores and responsibilities attendant on such a status, chronological status, and more importantly, psychological status. So if your intimate partner child defies you and you parentify him, that's definitely a red flag and an excellent reason to exit the relationship. What about if he bribes you? What if he gives you all the creature comforts? He gives you a car. He gives you an amazing home. You go on vacations in the most exotic places. You frequent the Michelin three-stars restaurants all the time. Can you devolve from luxury hotels to hovels? Can you survive on a tight budget? When prior to that, you had a blank check, a blank check. Can you win yourself off his addictive largesse? These are not reasons to stay together. If you're bribed, you're corrupted. And if you're corrupted, you end badly, exactly like in government. So when you think about being single again, put aside your current lifestyle, the material goods you have access to, anyhow in his mind, these things don't belong to you. These things are his. You will see when you negotiate the divorce. So you're living on borrowed time. You're given access to these things, like a lease, or you're renting these creature comforts. They're not yours.  Just to be able to drive, I don't know, a Porsche or a Lamborghini, or to go on vacation on the Riviera, these are alluring things. These are seductive things. I know I've had personal experience of all these things. But they're not worth it. I've given up on them personally. Same goes when you talk about your abode. Incredibly, people say I'm not divorcing him because I want to keep the house. I've invested in this house. The interior design and decoration of mine, all my fantasies and dreams are there. I got used to this, to this place of residence. I, people place significant sentimental value on their homes and they don't want to live. They won't even consider living their homes.  And it's because a home symbolizes the womb, safety, tranquility, stability, all the values that we so cherish. It's a safe base. People refuse to give up because they feel themselves at home. They're comfortable. They don't have to act. There's no persona. But in a home with an abusive partner, you do have to act. You can't be yourself. You constantly walk on eggshells. Why would you do that? And in which sense is this a home? You can't have a home with an abuser. You can have a shelter, it's a domestic violence shelter, or a verbal abuse shelter. It's not a home. It feels temporary and transient. It feels unsafe. The foundations are shaking and trembling. It's the epicenter of a constant earthquake, the earthquake which revives your relationship. You stay in a relationship to keep your dream home when actually it had long become a nightmare. And same for, if you stay in a relationship for money, it's the same thing exactly. No one is disputing the fact that divorced people are worse off economically, both men and women, worse off economically than married people or people in a committed cohabiting relationship. A breakup is going to have a massive impact on your pocketbook. If you're used to a certain lifestyle, in most cases, you can forget about it. You may have new dependents like your kids. But this is ransom. This is hostage money.   There's no bribe big enough because you live only once. I'm sorry to break this news to those among you who are religious. You live only once. And your most precious possession is time. And you're trading this exquisitely precious, dwindling, scarce resource for fungible things. Money comes, money goes. One of the major reasons that people provide for staying put in an unhealthy relationship is kids. I have kids with him. Some people even stay in abusive relationships because they have pets, dogs, or cats together with a partner. Staying together for the sake of third parties is a terrible idea.  This is the only reason to stay with someone. You never stay with someone for the sake of someone because of third parties. And these third parties definitely include your children and your pets.  They know you're not happy. They witness the abuse. They will suffer. Any separation and divorce are very traumatic when children are concerned. Even if they're well-prepared, even if they themselves push you to divorce or to separate. They're still unhappy. But it's far less traumatic than remaining trapped within a household where the two idols and gods are fighting. There's nothing more terrifying for a child than parents who are at each other's throats. And of course, I don't know even where to start when people tell me I'm staying with him because we have a dog together. And he wants to take the dog. If we separate, it's his dog who wants to take the dog, I grew attached to the dog. Are you for real? Are you for real? Everyone is scared of the future. What do you think? You're not alone in this. Everyone is terrified of the future. It's called catastrophize. Change is scary. You don't know what life has in store for you.  Life is hostile and dangerous and risky. You view things pessimistically and you're right to do so. You should not be polyan-ish. You should not have malignant optimism. You shouldn't expect the best. The best never happens. But every change is a beginning. Every crisis is an opportunity. Every bed just emphasizes the good. There's no light without darkness. You know all these cliches and all of them are 100% true. Being alone and single gives you a chance to find new love with a positive attitude. Is this a very high chance? No, it's not. When you're age 40, your chances of finding someone are 23% in the United States. It's a low chance, but it's better than zero. And right now what you have with your abuser, you have zero. So I put it to you that 23% is infinitely better than zero. When you live with someone you hate and someone who hates you, when you live with someone in adversarial conflict conditions, it's a war zone, it's a civil war. Why would you insist on staying in the battlefield? Don't have false hope. I mentioned magical thinking and polyan-ish thinking. That's not what I'm telling you. I'm not telling you that once you break up and abandon the abusive relationship, all will fall into place and you will be a lot happier immediately. Or even in the long term, no one can guarantee this. When you try to convince yourself that everything will work out magically when you start to believe in it, that's a bad sign. It's a bad sign. If you are in an abusive relationship, the chance is that everything will work out and miracles will occur, chances are zero. You need to end the relationship. When you find yourself talking to yourself in the mirror and looking yourself in the mirror and talking to yourself and saying, listen, it can't get worse. It's only going to get better. It's time to get out. False hope is the beginning of fantasy and delusion.  It means you can no longer sustain reality, can no longer countenance reality.  Don't lie to yourself about your current relationship and don't lie to yourself about the future without him. It's going to be tough, but in your relationship, you don't stand a chance. And outside your relationship, you stand a chance, however minimal. You may be too old, single at age 50 or even single at age 40 is a problem. The statistics are against you. You know me, I don't mean words and I always tell you the truth. The statistics are dead set against you, the likelihood of you ending up loveless, lonely or alone and single. These chances are very high. The world is stacked against you.  Men reach the peak of their attractiveness at age 50. Men at age 18, shocking, shocking numbers. So yeah, of course you could stay, of course you could stay alone, but you are alone. In an abusive relationship, you are alone. There's no bigger loneliness than being in a relationship with the wrong person. That's the most extreme form of loneliness. Hell is other people. So anyhow you're alone, leap of faith, take a chance and don't anticipate regret.  Of course you're missing out, opportunity cost.  Everything has a cost. So when you make a big decision, like breaking up, of course you may be making a mistake. But anticipating regret is a vicious cycle. Am I making a mistake? Will I regret it? What if? What if? Forget all this. There's no way for you to anticipate the outcomes of any action, let alone such a major decision. Just go for it. See what happens. You may end up not regretting. You may end up regretting. That's the meaning of being a grown-up. That's the meaning of being a grown-up. We assume risks. Nothing is riskless. Life is about risk and about loss. We are driven forward by failure and loss. These are the engines, the twin engines of growth. And so yeah, you may end up being alone and you will have no one to share the chores with and you will have to do everything by yourself and it's going to be tough. It's going to be onerous.  And don't stay with him out of guilt. Don't let him emotionally blackmail you. Remember, guilt is one of the strongest emotions. When we leave anything, we leave a job, we leave a partner, we let our children go, we feel guilty. You feel bad because you believe that you are causing pain. No one wants to cause pain intentionally, with exception maybe of sadistic psychopaths.  Growing up makes you feel guilty. It's a fact. And yes, you are causing pain and consternation and anger and other negative emotions.  But don't stay because of that. Don't stay because of it, because you owe him nothing.  It's not a transaction. It's not about given tape. It's about growing together. Love is about enhancing each other, not about taking from each other. Not about merging, not about fusing and there's no guarantee that you will not cause pain to each other. There's not such a promise anywhere, not even in classical marriage vows. Your heart tells you to live, follow your heart and gut. So don't let him emotionally blackmail you into staying. And don't be so terrified of being lonely. Who will I have dinner with? Who will I watch television with? Will I grow old alone? Yes, chances are you will. But it's better to grow old alone than to grow old with someone you seriously detest and hate, hate and holding content. Being alone is scary, of course it is, especially as you grow older. But there are many scary things in life and we take them on. I think bringing children to the world is definitely a terrifying experience, luckily women are in charge of that. There are many terrifying experiences, flying, if you stop to think of it, flying in a tin box in the air called an airplane, it's a bloody terrifying thing. Yet we take them on, we do these things, we drive cars, we drive cars and the statistics are against us, there's a serious chance of injury and death. It is true, by exiting your comfort zone, through facing the adversity of what life can throw at you, confronting the inbuilt hostility and risk of the universe, the indifferent universe, it is through this that we discover who we really are, what we are made of, our metal and we are able to develop, to evolve, to grow. So that's just another scary thing, being alone or being lonely, but you have to take it on and will you be alone forever, possibly, yes, yes, depending on your age, and by the way your education, the more educated you are, the more likely you are to end up being alone, a lifelong single, the older you are, the more likely you are to end up being like a lifelong single and that applies to both men and women and yes, about one third to one half of all adults in today's dystopian modern world, they're singles and so the chances are yes and if you do get married or hitched a second time and a third time, your chances to break up are much higher than the first time, so ultimately yes, the answer is yes, if you are unlucky enough to make the wrong choice with the first intimate partner, in all likelihood you will end up your life being alone, it's a fact, but why drag it on? Anyhow you're alone, emotionally you're alone in a relationship with the abuser, will you survive?  No, it's not lethal, you know, and you can discover the joys of being alone, but there's no need for drama, it's a condition of life, like disability, what if you develop, I don't know, a chronic condition? It's a loneliness, loneliness is a chronic condition similar to diabetes or, you know, I've just discovered I have diabetes or what, it's on the end, it's on the end, sometimes it's the beginning and what other people might think of you really is besides the point, why do you worry about what other people may think of you? Why do you fear judgment and the opinion of what other people, of other people? You break the news to people you can trust, don't break the news and don't share with people who put you down, these are not your friends, actually a breakup is a wonderful opportunity to find out who your true friends are, so don't involve everyone in everything, in every single detail of your life, this is not Facebook, it's a breakup, be wise and discriminate and don't be nostalgic for the good old days and yes, they were of course, they were good old days, some of the days were good, otherwise you would not have ended up with him, but do not spend time looking through photo albums, social media, videos of your happy moments together, why are you doing this to yourself, why are you steering up memories, are you trying to reconsider your decision to convince yourself otherwise, it's unwise and finally, many couples stay together because of the sex, the great, unbounded, dysregulated, mind-boggling, kinky sex and the partner's acceptance of every fantasy, that's something rare and so people get addicted to such sex, sexual intimacy is important in a relationship, but again it's a question of price, if sex matters to you more than absolutely anything else, if you are for example a masochist or a sub, a submissive, if you get off, if abuse turns you on actually and maybe sex is a good reason to stay together, if it's great, but otherwise the quality of sex is likely to be intimately connected to moments of conflict and adversity, a kind of reclaimed sex, so in order to, so there's a vicious cycle here, in order to have good sex, you would first need to confront each other, to fight, to argue, to beat each other up, to pulp and only then you can have great sex, that's a masochistic, sadistic cycle, if you don't mind being trapped in such a cycle and the great sex is ample compensation, then yeah some couples can survive based on sex only and they survive for decades based on sex only, especially if they introduce third parties or fourth parties into the mix, but otherwise the quality of sex is actually likely to deteriorate, as your relationship does and so you need to take this into account, the sex may be great now, but the abuse in your relationship portends, prognosticates a collapse in the quality of the sex a few years hence, there's a kind of a delay, delay time, so sex is not a good reason to remain in an abusive relationship in the long term, ultimately you need to ask yourself only one question, am I happy, not even does he make me happy, he has no obligation to make you happy, it's not his responsibility, you need only ask am I happy, and if the answer is no, walk away and don't look back, it's as simple as that really