Lakeland Currents, your public affairs program for North Central Minnesota. Produced by Lakeland PBS with host Ray Gildow. Production funding for Lakeland Currents is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport for information available at BemidjiAirport.org. Closed captioning for Lakeland Currents is sponsored by Niswa Tax Service, tax preparation for businesses and individuals online at NiswaTax.com. Hello again everyone and welcome to Lakeland Currents where tonight my guests are dressed identically in green because they work on so many projects together, but I'm very happy to have back Ben Wenchester who has been, he said this is the fifth time he's been on our show over the past 11 years, always has really interesting information. Ben is with the University of Minnesota, he's a senior research fellow and not only does he work in Minnesota now but he's been telling me he's been actually giving speeches around the country and to his immediate right is Chet Bodine who is a labor market analyst for the Northwest region, is that right? That's right, yes. With the Department of Economic, or Employment and Economic Development also known by the Ackerman deed, so if you ever hear that word deed that's what it stands for. Welcome to the show. Thanks Ben, it's good to have you back. I feel like you're almost a co-host. It's certainly my pleasure. I should be bringing my own chair. And I know you have been speaking a lot of places and you said you speak what two to three times a week now? That's right, yep. And that's over the whole state? Across the state, across the country at times too. So when we first met you, you were doing research on the brain gain in rural Minnesota and now you're revisiting the brain gain because a lot of exciting things have happened since your early research. So just give us an overview of what we're talking about. Sure, thanks, yeah. So I'm with the Extension Center for Community Vitality and part of the work we do is apply research. We want to do research that helps small towns across the state really reinvigorate their social and economic sectors. And what we had found early on was there was this dominant narrative about rural, about doom and gloom, right? We lost our hardware store, we had to close our grocery store, our schools consolidated but in the midst of all this negative narrative we actually found these trends that were quite positive. And this talked a lot about a migration of people aged 30, 40s and 50s that were moving to almost every rural county across the country, not just Minnesota. And this tended to counter the narrative again that you know people were just flocking away and flooding to the cities and the only people that were left were the folks who couldn't afford to move in a sense. But what we found was a story quite the opposite. In fact we had many people move into rural areas. They're bringing with them their education, their experience, their job skills, their careers in many cases and that this was actually helping to reinvigorate our small towns. And not only when we had done the initial research did we find that this happened a lot in the 90s. It continued in the 2000s but this stretched all the way back to the 70s and it just wasn't well documented. And so we started to do this research and outreach across Minnesota and let groups know, hey, by the way, you do have these newcomers. And once we state the trend people like, oh yeah, I did meet a couple new people here, here and there, right? But it's harder to know people that are new in your small towns today because I mean we're in Minnesota where it's dark when you get up and dark when you get home at night. I mean you wouldn't know it if somebody moved in across the street. So ultimately we tried to highlight these trends and that we had these newcomers moving in and many times these newcomers, they're very active socially but they're just active in different ways and we had talked about this in one of your previous programs too is that these newcomers are moving in and while they're not necessarily on the Kiwanis or the Lions Club, they're in the snowmobile group or the archery club or whatever it is. It's very much interspace, it's regional and people live in what I call the middle of everywhere that we don't just live and work and shop and play in one town. You may live in one town, you work in another and you recreate and shop and play in this two hour radius around your home. I've really noticed that in the health field. We sit here in Brainerd, Crosby to the east, Staples to the west, Wadena to the farther to the west, Little Falls south of us and so many of these people work in maybe they work for Ascension here in Brainerd but they live in Wadena or they might be working in Wadena and they live in Crosby. It's really changed. When I started my career in Staples, I was a teacher, it was expected that you would live in the town you worked in and that's not true anywhere anymore. There's another dynamic too is that 50 years ago we might have had a couple grocery stores in our small towns or hardware stores and those jobs have really been shifted to the regional centers. So we live much more in what I would call the new rural urbanism that we've got regional centers plus these outlying communities that again can go up to an hour out where people commute from. So while people may not want to live in Wilmer for example, they want to live in some of the smaller towns that surround Wilmer. So it's really this interesting dynamic of change that we've seen that lead to people wanting to live in a small town or a rural place and then working in those regional centers. Now, Chet, before we get into more of the detail of what he's doing, what's the connection to what you're doing with some of the things that Ben's doing? Well, I think there's a professional connection and then also a personal connection because I'm a resident of the Brainerd Lakes area. Professionally, I saw a lot of Ben's early work and it really informed a lot of my work when I started it up here in 2014. One of the things I found that really stuck out in the data first was the labor market shortage that was quickly approaching because of the silver tsunami as people have coined it. So, but I was really turned on and intrigued by what Ben had shown that we were actually bringing in more people in their 30s and 40s and we lost. And I didn't think that was something that was discussed very much in our communities. And he really made a great point that said, if we only reached out more, if we only encouraged this, how much further could it go? So, in your job with the Department of Employment Economic Development, what is it that you do primarily? Primarily, I research labor market data, trends, and also other economic and community development data. And so, most of the time I'm looking at statistics, kind of similar to what Ben does. So, do you find that your statistics are matching up to his statistics in terms of the trends? Are you seeing the same thing when you look at this through a different lens? I am, yeah. So, I've done a couple research pieces and used American Community Survey data, but used the same model that Ben's used in his research. It's a simple cohort method we use to look at how the in and out migration of different age groups into the region. And I use his model, and I use it specifically on our region, Northwest Minnesota, to see what was specifically happening here. And yeah, I saw a lot of the same results. One of the things that I sort of observed just by the jobs that I do in the summer is that Brainerd area has a lot of resorts. And I think in the past, we've gotten a lot of our summer help from European nations. A lot of kids, students would come in from other places. And with the change of administration and a change in the immigration laws, a lot of those students were not able to come here, which created some real shortages in some of the resorts. I don't know if that ended up getting straightened out towards the end of summer. But I know early in the season, that was a real big issue. And I know America, I think, typically, has not had the birth rate to produce all of our own workforce anymore. So we've really relied on the workforce coming from other places. Is that a fair statement? Yeah, that's right. I think what you look forward to, Chet mentioned, we're going to enter the tightest labor market we've almost ever experienced in this country. And rural areas are like canaries in the coal mine here. It's happening here first. And especially as we've got a greater proportion of our population that has retired already, if not beginning retiring in rural areas specifically, these dynamics are hitting us first. And we're starting to see now, so when we combine the tight labor market with some of these population projections, you'll see that the state offices will tell you too, like who's going to fill these jobs? Ultimately, we don't have the birth rate needed to help fill in the people basically for those jobs. So we do have to look to immigrant populations in many ways. You can look at domestic migration too, but domestic migration is not going to make up for the fact that we need millions of people to be brought into this cycle of workforce. So we are at the preface of some of these major structural shifts and which is really rewarding for me because we get to see this happen in rural areas first. We get to try things out in rural areas first on a scale that might not be like don't be afraid to fail. And if you fail in a smaller community, the impacts may not be as big as if you were to fail in a much larger community, for example. So even on this kind of brain-gain trend about trying to bring in residents, how do we recruit residents in? It's called a resident recruitment model. And many times, rather than an industrial recruitment model, which would be the business first and brings people, it's a well-worn argument in economic development about chicken or egg. Is it a chicken or egg? Do you need jobs to bring in people or can people bring in jobs? And 100 years ago would be jobs drew people, but this isn't 100 years ago. And so today people can bring with them jobs. And we had seen this in the research we had done early on is that we had people telecommuting. We had people that were 1099 workers for U.S. Bank. We had people book editors and publishers, electrical engineers. They were working from home. They were working remotely. And I think part of the story that one of the regional development commissions out of Appleton, they were an early partner in this research where we did interviews and focus groups. What they picked up on was many folks across the state, especially in urban areas, don't believe you can be a book editor in rural Minnesota. And really what we're trying to share with folks is that you can be a blank in rural Minnesota. Really, every occupational category is reflected there. Every industry is reflected. So just making, again, kind of back to that narrative, making it real for people that you can lead a vibrant life with a high quality of life in a rural community. The wage levels may not be the same, but the cost of living is not the same either. But we measure commute times in miles and minutes at the same rather than just minutes. So ultimately, we've got all these groups that have sprouted up across the state. I call them the organic efforts. So initially, we shared with communities what this research was. And the Regional Development Commission out of Appleton was the very first one eight years ago that capitalized on this. They helped us with the surveys, the focus groups, the interviews. Fairmont, Minnesota too, presented one time. And after that, the city council approved $5,000 to help work on resident recruitment efforts. And so we now have a program down there called Fairmont Area Life. And so we've had kind of all these organic efforts sprout up across the state to try something. Like, we don't have a well-worn path here, but we can try something at this point. And this is where the work that Chet's done over the past three years here has really helped inform our group as well. When we were talking off air, I thought it was really funny that you did all this research in the beginning. And you got it, came up with all this interesting information. And then when people started hearing about it, they came to you and say, well, now what do we do? And you said, we don't have anything. Go ahead and try some things out. Because that wasn't part of your original research. Yeah. And really for us, it's about the best voice for promoting your community or your existing residents. So if the narrative in your community is negative, like, you know, there's nothing here for you have your kids, for example, talk to some newcomers. Because new people are moving to all of our rural communities, and they're not moving there for pity. They're not moving there because, hey, I heard you lost your hardware store 25 years ago. I kind of feel bad for you. Like, nobody ever says that. People are moving to our small towns for what they represent to them today and what they will be in the future. Nobody looks back. So we've got all these kind of groups that are energized. They're informed. They're using research. And that led to the development of kind of these organic groups across the state. And Chet really took the lead on a group called Greater Minnesota Rising. I live in Staples. And the Staples community, I'm not positive who did the survey. But last fall or early winter, they did a survey to see what are the ages of people that live in the Greater Staples area. And Staples is a community of about 3,000 people. It was a shock to just about everyone to find that it's a young community. That's right. There's a lot of young families with young children that are in the area. I think everybody thought it was an old rundown railroad town with not a lot of younger people. And so I think that made the City Council and other leaders in the area ask themselves, what are we doing for these people? Just exactly what you've been saying. And there's a group now from your research in Staples too. I forgot what it's called. Do you remember what it's called? You said that started now in Staples like you did in Fairmont. So this actually leads right to Chet's work. His research in doing interviews and focus groups with newcomers in the central part of the state and the northwest part of the state led to the development of two efforts taken on by the Regional Development Commission in Region 5, as well as the Initiative Foundation out of Fairmont Falls. And what is that group called on Staples now? Do you remember? Well, I kind of want you want to back pedal a little bit. But I think what you're talking about is it's not a group. It's a regional kind of marketing strategy. It's called The Good Life. Okay, that's it. Yep. So what is it that they're trying to do? Well, we did some research prior to that to think like what's the substance behind this effort? What are we trying to do in the community that will create the conditions for newcomers to engage with the existing population to stay, to find things they enjoy and stay in the region, really. And that was the Greater Minnesota Rising research we did. And that project gave us some recommendations like what should we do regionally? What should we do locally? How do we get employers involved? So this kind of vacuum that was created by all this data that said, hey, we actually attract people in their 30s and 40s and people are like, well, what do we do about it? You know, that's what we tried to take on a little bit with the Greater Minnesota Rising research. That was in 2015. We came out the recommendations. From those recommendations, a few programs were developed, one of them being The Good Life. It is absolutely amazing to me. My wife and I have been down to Florida the couple, we go down for just a few weeks in the wintertime. All the help wanted signs. And it doesn't matter what the community size is. If you go to a restaurant, if you go into, if you need your tire worked on, your car worked on or whatever, there are help wanted signs just almost everywhere. And some of the larger businesses in the area, I know without getting into the names of the organizations, but some of them are 20 to 25 in place short in operating at full strength. So what can we do about this sort of thing? This is a huge issue. Is this your area chat? Are you going to give us an answer? You know, I try to help businesses who are planning for this know what's going on statistically more. But as a member of the community, I was also really interested to learn about how do we become a more welcoming environment for people who are moving here. And even for people in there, what you call them the millennials or people merging leader types who already live here and how do we help them convince them to stay more? So both recruiting and retaining workforce, I think is really important. But it depends on how your community looks like in terms of are they welcoming? Is there opportunities for them to engage with each other with existing residents? And so yeah, I think that's a big part of maintaining your workforce. Ben, you made a comment and I really believe this is true, even though I think a lot of people don't think about this. There are people who don't want their communities to get bigger. That's right. And they don't want them to change while there are ramifications for that philosophy. Why don't you share that? Yeah. So I think this general idea is that we don't want our communities to change and especially look at the suburban growth. Some of those suburbs were distinctly rural places 40 years ago and they have changed themselves into these more urban environments. So I think a lot of people look to that and be like, well, we don't want that. But I'd just like to remind the folks who aren't as welcoming that their parents may not have been welcoming either. But what would have happened if nobody moved to your town 50 years ago? We would have dried up by now. But ultimately, right now, we're just at the beginning here of the forefront of all of the baby boomers starting to retire.  And I would ask communities that say, if you're not welcoming, if you don't want new people into town, who's going to buy your house? 75% of our rural homes across the state are going to be on the market over the next 25 years. Who's going to buy these properties? If you're not welcoming, are you ready to take a hit in your equity of your home because you don't want new people there? But ultimately, what we hear a resounding message from these newcomers voices is that they would say, this is my town now too. And they want a voice in this community. Just as much the baby boomers today transform the communities that they moved into 40 years ago. So it's this continual transformation of our communities. This isn't new. This isn't the first time our communities have turned over. This is the fifth time they've turned over. So really talking about how have we managed change in the past? What can we do better? How can we celebrate the fact that people actually want to move here? They like your town for what you are. So how can we kind of capitalize on some of those trends, especially given the fact that we might not have, again, all these opportunities for social engagement, or you don't even know where these newcomers are? So for example, the Otter Tail County hired a rural rebound coordinator, a position dedicated to help welcome newcomers and have them connect with the existing people across the county. So they've got ambassadors from every town. Like the welcome wagon. It is. I believe you can't have a welcome wagon anymore because the post office surely cannot just hand you a list of everybody and their phone number and their address of who moved in. So they've got this grab a bite program in Otter Tail County, which is literally ambassadors taking newcomers out to lunch. And it's not, and it's not getting them to sit on your board. It's not asking them for a commitment. It's just getting to know who the newcomers are. And at the same time, we see we've had this happen in a number of places, but Meeker County more recently, I had a newcomer supper. And one of the biggest outcomes out of these newcomer suppers, which is directed more at just connecting newcomers to each other. It's not always connecting newcomers to the existing residents. But once newcomers see how many other newcomers there are, the number one outcome is these newcomers saying, I can't believe how many other new people there are here, because you generally don't see each other.  So being concrete and discreet about providing opportunities for newcomers to make a personal connection to the region, we believe is vital. Now you talked about, and one of your other shows that we were doing together, the shortage of leadership in rural areas. Are these groups addressing that at all? Yeah. So part of this is really trying to connect the existing infrastructure to these newcomer groups, because we've got a group in Northeastern Minnesota, Regen, which again is about getting recent folks to the iron range to connect with one another. So it really is, and we call it bridging capital from a social capital perspective, it's how do you connect the existing groups to the new groups, because these newcomers are moving in and they're creating nonprofit groups, they're creating their own social opportunities. They're not necessarily just jumping on board with the existing infrastructure, they want to do their own thing, and they actually do things very differently. So generally the younger people in our communities don't want to sit through a board meeting where you have five different committees update what they did of their 12 points and then talk about the budget for a half hour. It's very much about task forces, like I want to get something done. So maybe kind of this new dynamic is when you see these younger groups kind of doing things in town, they don't really go out and like get community consensus, like we as community developers would say, you want to do a project, get consensus, and then get some action playing like this whole process, they just go out and do it. They're like, well, this is something we're putting energy toward, we're just going to get this done. So there's all these very fascinating dynamics about how just the social dynamics of communities have changed as well. Now you said in your research, rural is rural and it doesn't matter if it's Minnesota or North Carolina and you have been asked to come to some of these other states. That's right. So are you seeing there's just absolute similarities to wherever you go? That's right. I mean there are more similarities than differences. Every time I get asked like, you're not going to find that here, I find it there. Really? It's growth in nonprofit sectors in these very diverse new groups that they've got. That's where the newcomers are spending their time. They are choosing the communities for quality of life, safety and security, low cost of housing. All of these dynamics generally are the same. It may shuffle a little bit, but they're always at the top. So people are choosing to move to rural. They're not being forced to. They want to live there. They want to raise their families there because they're beautiful places to live. For a community that's never been involved with either one of you, how should they start if they're interested in doing something like this? Would they contact you, Banner, or you, Chet, or how would they go about doing that? In our region, Region 5, which is Crow Wing, Cass, Morrison, Todd, Rodina County, we have started that framework and that's the good life that you referred to where we talked about it a little bit. And so that's kind of a hybrid program. It's got the regional website, connects a lot of the activities going on in the region together. But then it also highlights and publicizes some of the local programming that's meant to connect newcomers and millennials and emerging leaders within the region and to each other. And so we're working on that. I think any community who has a newcomer program or a millennial group could publicize through the good life. And the idea is you can reach a broader audience outside the region by working together on a program like that. Are there parallel studies being done in urban areas? Not necessarily. Not necessarily. This is still pretty much a rural initiative. That's right. So we just found out this past spring that we were awarded a three-year grant from USDA because we do have these dynamics we talked about. There is a brain gain, 30 to 50-year-olds moving in. There's this labor shortage upcoming. We're in a very sweet spot here. So we were awarded a three-year grant. Chet is on the advisory committee and helping us with that work as well as a number of these different initiatives across the state. And we've got three years. And this first year is we brought together these initiatives across the state that have been around really for two years or more. We've got about 10 of them. And we're starting to bring them together. They're going to help us do more focus groups, more interviews, not just with the newcomers, but also the existing residents. So as we've got these groups that are doing the work across state, we want to help them do their work better. Again, we're the experts at doing applied research. We've got very solid methods. We want to make sure that we're capturing the right information. But at the same time, we need to provide something that's valuable to people on the ground. So in the regional centers, we're interviewing immigrant populations too. We're interviewing business owners because really in some ways business owners in some communities are the only recruiter that you've got in that community. And how are they doing that work? So we're doing three years on this as well as a look at tourism. Because there is this examination right now. It's called the Halo Effect. The Minnesota Department of Tourism did a study that explained how visitors to your rural communities, when they have a positive experience, they can see this as a place they can move to. They see this as a place that they can start a business in or raise a family in. And that's if your narrative is positive. But if you go into the grocery store, the gas station, you ask people like, what's there to do around here? You're frontline folks for visitors and they say there's nothing to do here. You aren't going to be producing. Yeah, it is the kiss of death. You're not going to be contributing to any type of Halo Effect for your community. So training all these employees is really critical. That's right. I think just recognizing how many different fronts we've we've got to fight this battle on in terms of helping people to realize that you can be a blank in rural Minnesota. Well, we're down to about our last minute guys. So maybe we could just share with people how to contact your organizations. Sure. I'm easily available via email. Ben Winchester with the University of Minnesota Extension. You can Google Ben Winchester Brain Gain and you'll see our landing page. Not Brain Drain. We're trying to get away from that language. My email is benw at umn.edu. Okay, Jett. With the Department of Employment and Economic Development, you can reach me at my office location. I work here in Brannard at the Workforce Center in the Crow Wing Community Services Building. The Good Life is administered by Region Five Economic Development Commission. And so more information about that. You can certainly contact me at Sheryl Hills. You can certainly contact me and I'll put you in touch with them if you don't know Sheryl. But yeah, Sheryl or Don Espie over there are the leads of that. Well, it's really interesting, Ben, since you first started on the show, how this has grown, really, really grown. Hasn't it what you've been doing? We've come a long way. You hit some really critical pieces of information for rural areas. And I think it's amazing to me how many people have picked up on this and are starting to do something about it. So, well, thanks to you. Well, job. So, job well done, both of you. Thank you very much for being on the show, guys. We appreciate it very much. My pleasure. Thanks. You've been watching Lakeland Currents, where we're talking about what you're talking about. I'm Ray Gildow. So long until next time.


At student level we look at it in two ways. We look at it at year level. So we have data days where teachers on that year level are taken out and they look at the NAPLAN data in relation as well to other data that we collect. We collect data from ASA as well as each class or year level does audits of skills in both literacy and numeracy. So what we try and do on those days is look at the data to find the strengths and weaknesses and for us to get some correlation between all of the data that we do receive. Teachers then identify areas where a number of students or we might have quite a bit of the cohort are not achieving in that particular area that then becomes a teaching focus. So the teachers take on board they're the areas that they need to incorporate into their planning. We then also look at it from an individual student level and we look at those students who sometimes have missed a few areas. Now that becomes a small group targeted teaching area. So we can identify those students we can group them and we can then focus our teaching. We then use a pre and post testing with that with our audits and then we can look at that as far as they didn't have it here but in our testing in the next few months we'll show that they are able to get those. So we also have our goals and our measurable outcomes. Using NAPLIN data at the student level allows us to see that all of our kids are on track. Again though I think it's important to reaffirm that it's about corroboration and triangulation that nothing should be coming as a surprise to us. So it's a key tool for us in our curriculum and monitoring. It's a key tool for us in our benchmarking of our own student data and it helps also in the identification of individual needs of students. For example the item reports allow us to identify the skills to target with particular students. So that provides precise teaching programs and it allows us to build the skills of teachers in the identified areas and the kids are going to be the beneficiaries of that precise and informed teaching. NAPLIN data is used completely at a student level because everything that we plan within the school has to do with the children and improving that learning. So we look at the data and we look for trends within that data within either individual children, groups of children and then the whole cohort of children and within that that allows us to then focus in on curriculum areas that need to be improved the next year. For example we noticed a fair few years back at our school that there was a running trend in boys reading comprehension was underachieving in the NAPLIN results where we hadn't really noticed in a class-based level. We then implemented the next year a new stars and cars program within that and also implemented a day once a term where dads would come into the classroom to promote reading amongst boys. So the result of the new program that came from the data results and the dads in the classroom meant that a rising trend then in boys and having a closer match with girls then in their reading comprehension. The NAPLIN results and data is also used for our staffing allocation. We really look at where there are weaknesses within again individual students, small groups of children or whole cohorts and we allocate our staffing in accordance with that where the needs are and that is really it's enhanced our student development and the results have improved as a result of that. At a student level we use NAPLIN band data to work out exactly what students need to do to move forward specifically giving teachers learning teaching learning strategies so that they can provide students with the opportunities that they need to achieve that next level. Once teachers have identified using the broad brush stroke where a student situated if he needs help in writing or he needs help in his around his numeracy, teachers then because they're experts because that they make professional fine-grained judgments they pick up fairly quickly just on the basis of their interactions with a student on a day-to-day basis what the student needs to improve. I think NAPLIN strength is in the broad identification of students with needs or indeed who need to be challenged more because they're particularly bright rather than being a diagnostic tool that's going to help teachers to do their job on a day-to-day basis. One of the things we've been able to do is to identify particular students with particular needs for example we've through the NAPLIN data identified students who've had who needs assistance with writing and we've got together as an intervention group in year 8 which has been highly effective. Those things really came out of identification in the NAPLIN data. We use it to define the gaps so where are our students are missing information from the curriculum where are we not being effective with that. We've used it this year to create targeted classes for students at the top end of NAPLIN scores who are not achieving their maximum growth so that's provided us with the information to provide those classes for those students. It's also provided us with information for our parents as we've stepped back from streaming so we have made that decision this year to discontinue streaming in the school and having the information from NAPLIN that says that what we're doing for the students at the lower end of achievement is working. It's working for the middle but it's actually not working for the top end of our students so having that information for our parents means that we can make those decisions with confidence. Well student level is really important. We sit down and we have a look at a number of things. The actual NAPLIN data package and the SMART data is a fantastic user friendly service well we believe it is. So we're able to look at that the distractors and we also look at a lot of the data and how our students are performing. Often once we've gathered the data and looked at it we might have questions about why students answered in different ways and so then we're able to go away and complete Newman's error analysis and take out specific questions and then we interview the students and then that gives us more information again about how and why students are answering the way they are. It helps us then to reflect on our teaching. Is it that the children are not understanding or comprehending the problem or is it actually that they're not able to apply themselves and they don't have that mathematical knowledge to actually achieve the question. So there's lots of different ways that we use it. That's one particular way individually. We use NAPLIN data at a student level firstly to look at our cohorts and to see within the context how they achieve compared to national outcomes. We drill down on those kinds of information more specifically when we maybe have a student has an individual need and then we look at the item analysis and we work out whether that child needs to have an individual learning program and also use some of the teaching strategies which are found on NAPLIN to actually try and address some of those needs. We use NAPLIN data to also look at groupings of children, the range of children we have for example at my school currently, high achieving students and interestingly we've seen some of the information we got from NAPLIN about our high achieving writers not achieving the outcomes that we think they should. Upon further investigation we found that through the item analysis of the sorts of things they weren't doing were linked to not being adventurous enough with writing. They were sticking to the guidelines that we taught them that they were such good students they wanted to do what we had told them. What we then did with the teachers is have a look at that data, explore it and try to create more natural writers for our students so that when they write they're not writing to a test, they're writing as a natural writer. Use of NAPLIN data can be used across quite a range of key learning areas. Currently we've looked at our mathematics school program and the school program had a very strong focus on computation, on problem solving and language. We wanted to make sure the other strands in mathematics were also being met, the outcomes also being met and we looked at the data from NAPLIN and we were able to ascertain that we actually were achieving the same standards over the years in those other strands that we hadn't prioritised as much in mathematics as previously. This has given us some good information to plan the next step, especially with the new mathematics syllabus coming on board. This is where we mainly use our NAPLIN data. So we look towards using the data for the following year. So when students are put into their classes we expect that all the teachers go on and make up classes for their new cohort of students. And look at then which area is the one that we need to focus on for the students of that class. So this is where it is really important because that allows the teacher to understand where their class is coming from and to support them in their learning across KLA's, but mainly implementing the skills that they need to progress them in their literacy and numeracy. The learning and support faculty use this data a lot to identify students who may need significant assistance with literacy and numeracy and they do their withdrawal programs and support teachers across KLA's with putting in scaffolds and support strategies to assist them in accessing the curriculum at an age stage appropriate level.


Thank you for having me in this conference. My apologies that I'm unable to delay my presentation. I have other obligations with clients. They are scheduled with timetables and everything. I cannot reschedule them. They're all over the world as well. My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm a professor of psychology in Southern Federal University or Stov-on-Don in Russia. And I'm a professor of finance and a professor of psychology in the outreach program of SEAPS, Center for International Advanced and Professional Studies. My contract obligates me to use this introduction in all my presentations. So you have my deepest apologies for inflicting it on you. Today I would like to discuss workaholism. Is it an addiction or is it a lifestyle? Here's an unpleasant taboo fact. We have a very conflicted relationship with work. Work keeps us alive. Work sustains us. Work is a part of our identity. Work carries us forward through the day. Work gives meaning to our lives. And yet we hate many of us. Hate going to work. And this is why recently, when I say recently, I mean in the last two, 300 years, we had created another sphere of life, leisure. There's work and there's leisure. We love leisure. We hate work. Now no one says they hate their work because it's politically incorrect. But studies and surveys have shown that the vast majority of people are not happy with their jobs and go to work very reluctantly. In Japan, there is a word, kouroshi. Kouroshi means death, death, literal, physical death by overworking. Herbert Freudenberger coined the term burnout in 1974. That's a lot of time ago. And the ICD edition 11, the International Classification of Diseases, published by the World Health Organization, edition 11, the latest, recognizes burnout as an occupational phenomenon. In other words, not as a pathology, but it is an inevitable outcome of going to work, burnout. So how can we tell apart workaholism from other work-related phenomena? For example, work investment or work engagement or pleasure in work. Well, workaholism is closely associated with mental health disorders and it has negative consequences. Workaholism had been associated with job stress, work-life imbalances, interpersonal difficulties, the aforementioned burnout, workplace conflict and adverse health outcomes. Liby May defined workaholic as a work-obsessed individual who gradually becomes emotionally crippled and addicted to power and control in a compulsive drive to gain approval and public recognition of success. And if this sounds a lot like narcissism, it's because it is, as you will see a bit later. Overall, it is estimated that 8% of people had what we call workaholism, defined as being overly concerned about work driven by an uncontrollable work motivation and investing so much time and effort to work that it impairs other important life areas. I want to read to you a few of the questions that we use in a typical workaholism questionnaire. Do you think of how you can free more time to work? Do you spend much more time working than initially intended? Do you work in order to reduce feelings of anxiety, guilt, helplessness or depression? Have you been told by others to cut down on work without listening to them? Do you become stressed if you are prohibited from working? Do you deprioritize hobbies, leisure activities and or exercise because of your work? Do you work so much that it has negatively influenced your health? You see that workaholism is not just spending a lot of time at work. Spending a lot of time at work used to be the standard until the middle of the 20th century. Long before the Industrial Revolution, people were very proud of their work. People identified with their work. People bragged about the quality of their products and they were intimately connected to the products. They were artisans. They were apprentices of artisans. Work was not something extraneous, something you did until you got back to your real life.  People worked 12 and 16 hours a day in the fields, in factories and most of them, those who were blacksmiths and artists and painters and most of them were very, very attached to their work environment. And they passed on the knowledge from one generation to the next in a regulated system of guilds and apprenticeships. And then something happened in the middle of the 50th century, a middle of the 20th century. We had divorced work. We had divorced work because automation came in, because diversions and entertainment became mass produced because the internet broke out and long before the internet television. So suddenly work looked like your old first wife, you know, not exactly exciting anymore. And we had created the new, we had minted the new concept of leisure. Workaholism is when you can do only work and not leisure, when you can't do leisure. But in this sense, perhaps many people had been workaholics without knowing it, like the famous scene in Molière. Workaholism caters to many psychological needs. It is a dimension of identity. It is gratifying. It ensures a sense of wellbeing. It guarantees narcissistic supply. Attention, it ameliorates performance anxiety, panic attacks, depression, sleep disorders, ADHD, anger, disappointment, irritation, hostility, tension and stress via compulsive control and ceaseless driven activity. In other words, the best description of workaholism is self-medication. It's a self-medicating, self-soothing activity in the same category as overeating. It has therefore strong addictive features. I refer you to work by Graves, Ruderman, Olhot, Weber, for example, in 2012. Number five, workaholism is augmented by insatiable, unattainable perfectionism. In a National Center for Biotechnology Information NCBI study, they try to see whether there's any connection between workaholism and narcissism, which is my field. And the article was titled, is narcissism associated with heavy work investment? The moderating role of workload in the relationship between narcissism, workaholism, and work engagement. The lead author was Alessandra Falco and Damiano Giraudi, but there were other authors. And the authors concluded, narcissism was positively associated with workaholism and its dimensions of working excessively and working compulsively, but only in individuals facing a high workload. Furthermore, narcissism was positively associated with work engagement and its dimensions of vigor and dedication, but not absorption, in employees with average levels of workload. Finally, the workload exacerbated the relationship between narcissism and work engagement and its dimensions so that these associations were stronger when the workload was high. That's a very surprising result. It seems that we don't become workaholics because we increase our workload. We, our workload creates our workaholism, not the other way. It's not that we take on workload because we are workaholics, but when our workload increases, we become narcissistic workaholics. It's, in other words, a reaction. It's what we call in psychology reactance. It's a reactive pattern. Workaholism is context dependent, is situational, and is intimately connected with narcissistic defenses. I continue to quote from the article. Overall, our study suggested that in a work environment characterized by moderate levels of demand, individuals with strong narcissistic components might inherently feel energetic and dedicated, engaged at work. Differently, in a demanding work environment, workers with high narcissism might experience higher work engagement, but they could also be at risk of workaholism. Let's put it simply. A demanding work environment where the workload is never ending, ever increasing in such a demanding work environment, narcissistic people will be triggered and become workaholic. It's amazing because therefore workaholism is not a dimension of personality or identity. It is a reaction, a defensive reaction.  I continue to quote from the article. Although some researchers suggest workaholism to have some positive features, recent reviews and empirical studies have shown that workaholism is mostly associated with negative outcomes for both the individual and the organization, such as reduced job and life satisfaction, work-family conflict, physical and psychological symptoms, higher systolic blood pressure, cardiovascular risk, inflammatory response, sleep problems, reduced job performance, as well as sickness, absences and present easing. On the contrary, work engagement, which is the opposite of workaholism, work engagement is mostly associated with positive outcomes for the individual and for the organization, such as physical and mental health, workability, work-family enrichment, job and life satisfaction, organizational commitment, as well as task and contextual performance. We believe that, building on the bio-psychosocial model, this study contributed to the growing body of evidence about the interaction between personal and situational factors in explaining workaholism and work engagement, a bad and good form of heavy work investment, respectively. More specifically, our study showed that narcissism was positively associated with workaholism and its dimensions only in individuals facing a high workload. Furthermore, narcissism was positively associated with work engagement and its other dimensions in employees with average work levels of workload, as I've said before. So, this opens a whole new vista a whole new vista of thinking, a whole new vista of thinking because interventions in organizational context that are only focused on workaholism, interventions that are only focused on workload, regulating, smoothing out workload, reducing workload, are not gonna work. Interventions should deal also with narcissism. If the intervention doesn't deal with narcissistic gratification, narcissistic supply, narcissistic rage, narcissistic control, narcissistic defenses, narcissistic self-states, if narcissism is ignored, interventions will not work. Workaholism disrupts the life-work balance so it can be conceived or reconceived as a form of schizoid style because when you're an alcoholic, when you have workaholism, you don't have emotions. You're mechanical, you're avoidant. These are schizoid features. And of course, the schizoid core, what Jeffrey Seinfeld calls the empty core, gun trip, the empty core is deeply associated with narcissism. All schizoids are, to a large extent, narcissists are referred to work by Fairburn, gun trip, and others. So, workaholism, narcissism, schizoid reactions, no emotions, no friendships, no personal contacts, no sex, no intimacy, no family. Work, work, work, work becomes all consuming and it is also grandiose because when you're an alcoholic, your grandiosity tells you that no one can do the job as well as you. The workaholic never delegates. In a study in 2015 on women survivors of intimate partner violence and another study in 2013 on survivors of childhood sexual abuse, we found out that these groups of people, traumatized victims of abuse, may be inclined to overwork. So it's a compensatory mechanism, intimately linked with reassertion of grandiosity. You see, the abused victim feels helpless. There is learned helplessness through intermittent reinforcement, through bullying. So the abused victim feels helpless and one way to regain control, retake control, one way to feel grandiously ready to take on the world is to overwork. Narcissism is a post-traumatic condition, don't forget this. Of the big five personality traits, conscientiousness, extroversion, neuroticism and openness, are weakly, weakly, positively related to workaholism. Agreeableness is negatively related to workaholism. I refer you to studies by Andreasen, Hatland, Palacen, 2010, Burke, Matheson, Palacen, 2006, Clark, Lelchuk, Taylor, 2010 and others. Type A personality achievement, type A personality, achievement motivation, perfectionism, they are strongly correlated with workaholism, as is narcissism. And I refer you to work by Andreasen, Erson, Erickson, Palacen, 2012, Clark and Allies, 2010. There was a paper published titled, The Relationships Between Workaholism and Symptoms of Psychiatric Disorders, a Large-Scale Cross-Sexional Study. The lead author was Cecilie Shoe Andreasen and Mark D. Griffiths. And they found out amazing and frightening correlations between severe mental health disorders and workaholism. And I'm saying frightening because workaholism is definitely on the increase and it is a barometer, a seismograph, of a tidal tsunami wave of mental health disorders. We are much more mentally ill today than we had been 20 and 30 years ago. By all standards, by all measures, I refer you for example to studies by Twenge, by Kembo, the prevalence and incidence of depression disorders, depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, narcissism, personality disorders, is skyrocketing. You could safely say that one third of the population is today technically, clinically, mentally unhealthy. That's a staggering number and it's associated with the rise in workaholism. Listen to the authors of this article. I quote, correlations between workaholism and all psychiatric disorder symptoms were positive and significant. Basic demographics, age, gender, relationship status and education explained only 1.2% of the variance in workaholism. Work demographics, work status, position, sector, annual income explained an additional nigger 5.4% of the variance. Age and managerial positions were important but they explained a very small percentage of the variance. Psychiatric symptoms explained a huge part of the variance in workaholism. Psychiatric symptoms such as ADHD, OCD, anxiety, depression, they explained 17% of the variance. 15 times more than demographic features and three times more, three to four times more than the actual job, the actual workplace. It seems that people with psychiatric disorders and personality disorders gravitate towards workaholism or positions that require workaholism. ADHD, the authors continue. ADHD and anxiety contributed considerably. The prevalence rate of workaholism status was 7.8% of the sample, in line with other studies, by the way. In an adjusted logistic regression analysis, all psychiatric symptoms were positively associated with being a workaholic. The independent variables explained between 6.1 and 14.4 in total of the variance in workaholism cases. Although most effect sizes were relatively small, the studies findings explain our understanding of possible psychiatric predictors of workaholism and particularly shed new insight into the reality of adult ADHD in work life. Workaholics scored higher on all the psychiatric symptoms than non-workaholics. And so those addicted to their work, 34%, 34% of work addicts, workaholics, met the criteria for anxiety. 33% for ADHD, 25% for OCD, 9% had depression. This is two to four times higher compared to non-workaholics, let alone the general population. The authors say individuals with ADHD may have to work harder and longer to compensate for their work behavior caused by neurological deficits. They may also be at risk of taking on projects and tasks impulsively, resulting in more work than they can realistically do within normal work hours. Furthermore, it is hypothesized that these workaholic ADHD types push themselves in their job in order to disprove conceptions of them by others as being lazy or unintelligent. And so people who are workaholics are usually young. Contra to the myth that all older people like workaholics, actually the young people are workaholics. Single workers, people who are single, people with higher education, managers, self-employed, people who work in the private sector, women, are much more likely to be workaholics than men. This flies in the face of all the stereotypes because we have this Japanese actually stereotype of the salary men, the middle-aged men who goes to work and becomes workaholic. But the actual picture is a young woman who is highly educated. That's the typical workaholic. But which is the chicken and which is the egg? Any addiction can bring out these disorders. If you're an alcoholic, you develop ADHD, you develop OCD. Alcoholism involves alcoholic myopia, which is a form of grandiosity. Alcoholism reduces empathy. So maybe all these effects are the results of workaholicism. Not, they are correlated with workaholicism because they were brought on. They were engendered. They are comorbidities of workaholicism because workaholicism created them. It's a hypothesis. Because work carries multiple psychosocial functions. Work is an organizing principle. It abuse life with meaning and direction. It boosts self-esteem. It is a sublimatory channel. We redirect aggression and we redirect the sex drive into work because work is socially acceptable. So we sublimate these drives. And work is of course a great distraction with an A. A form of entertainment and avoidance tactic. In a science brief published in Psychological Science Agenda in April 2006, the title was Workaholicism is not just long hours on the job. The brief was authored by Melissa Clarke. And the author wrote, the term workaholicism was coined in 1971 by minister and psychologist Wayne Oates, who described alcoholism as the compulsion or the uncontrollable need to work incessantly. Since then, she says, research on workaholicism has been plagued by disagreements surrounding how to define and how to measure the construct. For example, workaholicism has been defined as an addiction to work by Eng Sørensen Feldman in 2007, Porter in 2006, Robinson in 2000. It has been defined as a pathology by Fassel in 1990. It has been defined as a behavior pattern that persists across multiple organizational settings by Scott Moore Micelli in 1997. And it had been described as a syndrome comprised of a high drive, high work involvement and low work enjoyment by Aziz in Zikar in 2006. In an effort to reconcile these varied perspectives, writes the author. We identified key commonalities across these definitions. And we use these commonalities to form a comprehensive definition that includes the following components, feeling compelled to work because of internal pressures, having persistent thoughts about work when not working and working beyond what is reasonably expected of the worker as established by the requirements of the job or basic economic needs. And this is despite the potential for negative consequences, health consequences, marital issues. I refer you to Clark, Michel, Zdanova, and Puy and Baltes, most recent article. Let us summarize. We have difficulties reconceiving work. Work has been with us since the inception of the human species, probably a million years. But only in the last 50 years, five zero, which is nothing in historical terms and definitely nothing in psychological terms. Only in the last 15 years, we had redefined and refrained our relationship with work. We had created a new sphere of life called leisure, which did not exist until the second half of the 20th century, except for the aristocracy. Aristocracy had only leisure, and we had incorporated it into a model of life. And this automatically created conflict between work and leisure. One of them became desirable, leisure, and one of them became undesirable, work. So now everything associated with work took on negative, a negative tone. Workaholism could be conceived as a historical reframing of our attitudes to sex, sorry, to work. In other words, an attitudinal issue, a lifestyle issue, not a psychological problem. Another option is that workaholism is a reflection, of mental health issues, psychiatric disorders, and also serves to amplify them, to magnify them, to increase them and enhance them. It's a second possibility, a third possibility. Some people with some types of mental health disorders, for example ADHD or OCD, they use workaholism and perfectionism to cover up for their deficiencies, to disguise their mental health issues, to compensate and to present to the world a perfect flawless facade to fit in, to belong, to conform, to sublimate. That's a third possibility. What do we know by now? We know that the last two are probably true.  In other words, it can be easily construed as a sign or a symptom of mental health issues. We also know that specific populations and cohorts present with workaholism when it is together with, when it's comorbid with ADHD or OCD, so it's probably compensatory. Regarding the psychosocial view, that we are redefining our relationship with work, that's a work in progress. We are still not sure as automation increases, as globalization increases, with the new constraints of the pandemic, with the disintegration of institutions, including micro-institutions such as the family, with a growing tidal tsunami wave of narcissism, dysregulation, promiscuity, and other forms of social anomy. We are still not sure where workaholism fits in, but it doesn't look good. It doesn't look good. It looks very, very much like sickness on the body of the organization and on the body of the individual who engages in it. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Sam, for your affirmative presentation. Thank you. You have discussed a quite serious topic because this topic is really, very serious in our life. Indeed, yes. Especially in the West, by the way. Maybe in Japan, maybe in Japan also. It's for Sam, can I ask him now? I think we're having some parties. Don't be workaholics. What are you doing here?  Yes, yes, of course. Please, always, please. I thought, thank you, because it was really interesting about your speaking. I was a bit afraid. It was still very interesting. Thank you. I thought, I think we think that maybe the core problem nowadays is a lack of culture of self-awareness. You know what I mean? There's not this general culture of how to manage my inner world, my psychology. I meet psychologists only if I'm ill, if I have problems. But we are totally lacking of tools, of instruments to manage ourselves in this sense. And I think that's why we will fall so easily in this kind of tricks, like becoming alcoholic as a totally automatic mechanical responses to difficulties mechanism, as you said, of compensation. Because we're totally not aware of what goes, what is going on within us in our psychology. I think this is a very important point for prevention, for acting before this big issue to a frigging wave of narcissism and mental illness to talk about is a little bit of overwhelm us. And I think this is a very interesting point. I think it is a core point, a culture of self-awareness, to spread it, to share a culture of self-awareness of instruments to manage ourselves. And I wanted to know what you think about it. Well, the British object relations school in the 1960s and into the 1990s, actually. They were the first to suggest that what we call the self or the ego is relational. It's not a standalone unit. And in this sense, our very concepts of individual and personality are probably wrong because they imply that we are atoms. Of course, this attitude in philosophy reflects the atomization of society. It simply went along with society. It was born to be individualistic, born-toned to be self-sufficient, born-toned to separate and individuate if you wish. So that's my first comment, self-awareness. And I don't wish, of course, to minimize what you had said, but I think self-awareness is definitely only one of the requirements because once you become self-aware, let's say, you may become aware of massive deficiencies relational deficiencies. You may become aware of severe dissociation.  You may become of a self that you will reject wholeheartedly. You will not like the self that you discover. Actually, I think a lot of the lack of self-awareness is a defensive mechanism against the disintegration of relationships, institutions, society at large. And I'm not the first to say this. Emil Dugheim said it long before me when he referred to unnomic societies. Actually, one of his most famous books is On Suicide. He predicted, he predicted. And of course, Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, numerous others. Everyone had been warning from Foucault to, everyone had been warning that we are going to lose ourselves because the self is not floating in space. It's heavily dependent for nourishment and boundaries. I mean, take the concept of boundaries. What is your boundary? Your boundary is where you stop and the world begins. But what if there is no world? You cannot have boundaries. You're unboundary by definition because you need to have something external against which you can bump, against which you can become. The process of becoming. And so self-awareness is not the panacea because we really are in big trouble as far as the environment. And so as long as we have this situation, which is anomy, I think the incidents and prevalence of mental health issues will increase inexorably and cannot be stopped because one way to look at mental health issues of all kinds with the exception of biochemical ones like schizophrenia and so on, one way to look at mental health issues is as a form of escape. As a form of escape. We don't want to live in reality. We don't want this world.  We want out. We are opting out in droves. Billions of people are opting out. Sometimes via substances, sometimes via retreating into a world of inner objects, giving up on external objects, deleting object relations and having object relations only internally, which is a great definition of psychosis, narcissism, et cetera. So we had created a situation where the only skeleton we have is endoskeleton. We no longer have exoskeletons. We no longer have supports. And we have to rely on ourselves, but we cannot even become self-aware because it's risky because self-involved relationships and we don't have them. So we are not self-aware. We have to rely to summarize the answer. We have to rely on something that we are not allowed to be aware of. It's a paradox.  Your only source of support is yourself, but you're not allowed to be aware of yourself. It could be too traumatizing. It's conundrum. It's unsolvable. So huge problem. I enjoy the discussion very much. Thank you. I would just like to provocably say that it is, I would like to optimistically hope that it is solvable in a way through different aspects because I'm an applied neuroscientist. And if I want hope also for my children and for the next generation, I prefer to think that we can go from the automatization which you mentioned to self-definition and to better relationship with the other. And I hope we're, I think we're all aware of this and working also to improve it. But Sam, thank you so much for this very, very, very deep lecture. I would like, I would just like to make one comment and I'll give space to the next speaker. The primal theme of psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience, the primal theme is the focus on the individual. We must begin to apply psychology to society. We must begin to think in relational terms. We must begin to think in network terms. We must begin to consider people as nodes, nodes in Indra's net, in a network. And we must begin to heal society. And perhaps I would say we must begin to treat and heal society long before we try to heal and treat individuals. The context, what I call the ego ecosystem, like the ecosystem, the ecosystem, the context are critical. If there is an extinct species, you want to revive the species.  You put rocks, you put plants, you make sure the sunshine, only then you bring the species into the environment. We are trying to heal and modify and cure and help individuals embedded in a sick, decaying, decomposing environment. It will never ever work. It's like watering the plant, but denying the plant sunshine. Finally, the plant will rot, rot away. We must begin as psychologists to stop thinking in terms of individuals. That was a huge mistake which started more or less at the end of the 19th century. Huge mistake. And we must revert to relationships, community, society, frameworks, collectives, environment, ecosystem, and ecosystem. We must become environmentalists. Thank you. I regret that I have to say goodbye because I have clients. I apologize to the next speakers. Thank you, Sam, for your limited presentation. Thank you very much for having me and for tolerating me. See you all. I request you to send your full-length article as well as your presentation in our mail. Thank you, thank you kindly. I hope you recorded a video so you please send that to our mail. Yes, I will send you the video. I believe I recorded it. Take care. Okay. Okay, thank you. So next I would like to call our speaker, Dr. Amanda Perry.


Growing up in the church as a good old Christian boy I was taught to check the teachings of the world against the teachings of the Bible because if it didn't line up with the teachings of the Bible, well then obviously that's how you would know it's not true. But what I was not taught was to check my interpretation of the Bible against what I knew to be the character of God. And I think if Christians performed that test, they would have a much clearer picture of what the Bible actually says. Okay, number one, how do you know God's character if you're putting into question everything in the Bible? People often use the argument that he's making in order to justify the fact that they don't believe that hell exists because it doesn't align with God's character. How could God do something so hateful and mean as send people to hell? So I don't think that that's really true. I'm not gonna really believe that. The Bible reveals to us God's character. And when we dispose of that, we're left with our own idol of what God looks like. And you can see this play out many times. People are like, oh, you know, my God's only about love. But they dispose of his attributes of holiness. Look to the word of God to define what God's character is like. Follow for more Christ-centered content. And if you can, support my ministry on Patreon.