Yeah, welcome. We're so glad you could join us today, this first day after Easter, so I'm sure it's a moods day where you are too. Anyway, we're so glad to have you, and today we're going to talk more about helping students with transitions. We thought this was a good time of year to do that as we think about kids transitioning to new grades or maybe on to college and career. And just as things get a little crazier at our schools in the springtime. So, um, again, hi, I'm Steph Lundgren, and I'm Tammy Cheatham. So, um, yeah, we've been the ones leading you through para trainings I guess we decided for five years that we've been having these para trainings, and we always look forward to seeing all of you. So first we're going to talk about a little bit about executive function and we've talked to you about this a few times now. Um, but it's the neurobiological process that lets us organize prioritize and analyze and I might have everybody mute themselves until it's time to talk and then we can unmute. We're getting a little bit of feedback there. Okay, so again, it's that process that in our brain that lets us organize prioritize and analyze. That's what executive function is and children with ADHD and related neurobiological problems have impaired executive function skills due to abnormal dopamine levels in the frontal lobe of their brain. And it's not just ADHD kids that have executive dysfunction, but 75% of kids with ADHD do tend to have executive dysfunction. So that was kind of a hard to understand description possibly. So we have a little video here to watch and we'll talk about it and then we're going to break off and start to talk about that transitions, which involves some of our executive functions. Trouble with executive function isn't a diagnosis or learning disability on its own, but when kids have a weakness in this area, it impacts learning and everyday life. The term executive function may not be familiar to some parents. It refers to a group of important mental skills that allow us to set goals and get things done. There are three main areas of executive function, working memory, flexible thinking and inhibitory control, which includes self control. Working memory is the ability to keep information in mind so you can then put it to use. Flexible thinking is being able to see problems from multiple angles and find different ways to solve them.  Kids who struggle with executive function often have trouble paying attention and focusing, organizing and planning, starting and completing tasks and shifting focus from one task to another. It's important to know that executive function issues don't have much to do with intelligence. Kids with executive function issues can be just as smart as their peers who don't have these challenges. It's not clear exactly what causes executive function issues, but we're learning more all the time. Research using MRI shows that people who struggle with these skills have slower development in the parts of the brain that are responsible for executive function. There also seems to be a genetic component. Many kids who struggle with executive function have a parent who also does. Things in the environment could also play a role, including high stress, poor nutrition and sleep, lack of exposure to language, and low quality of caregiving. Problems with executive function are closely tied to ADHD, but kids with ADHD aren't the only ones who have trouble with these skills. Many kids with learning issues also have weaknesses in executive skills that contribute to their challenges. For example, some kids with dyslexia have trouble with working memory, so even after they've become fluent readers, they might have problems with reading comprehension. They might have a hard time understanding a chapter they're reading because they can't remember what happened in the chapter before it. Executive function develops over time, so many kids find they have fewer challenges with it by the time they're young adults, but these problems don't always disappear completely. The good news is that there are ways parents and teachers can help kids improve executive function and learn strategies for working around their challenges. Classroom accommodations like extended time and preferred seating can help, so can tutoring and organization skills. Research shows that even brief interventions teaching kids how to pause and reflect before they respond leads to improved executive function and actual changes in how the brain functions. And for kids with ADHD, treatment for that disorder can often reduce the symptoms caused by weak executive function skills. With the right supports, kids with executive function issues can do as well in school as their peers and have an easier time managing the tasks and activities of daily life. Okay, so that's a quick look at what executive function is. And one of the things that they mentioned was flexible thinking. There we go. So working memory, flexible thinking and inhibitory control are all parts of executive functioning skills. So today we're really going to focus on that flexible thinking when we talk about transitioning. So are kids able to think flexibly enough or, you know, kind of bend in what they're doing, kind of being able to adapt from one thing to the other. And that's, that's adjusting transitions. Okay, again, if we could all unmute that will help. So as we talk about transitions. And again it's that shifting focus from one activity to another and I think we can all draw on experiences right. We all have had probably students we've worked with who have trouble when we ask them to stop doing something and start doing something else. Would we agree. There are some cases right now to see if you're shaking your heads or not but I think we can imagine and especially if I can think about little kids to who haven't developed that skill quite yet. Like if you think about a toddler and you ask them to put away one toy and do something else, or go, you know, it's bath time we have to put away the toy and go for bath time. So kids, you know, really have a hard time with those transitions, but it's not just for toddlers and it's not just little kids, it shows itself differently from a tantrum as kids get older. So one thing I'm going to move my little control bar at the bottom so we can see. What is staying positive I think before we even start to talk about this we have to talk about our teacher mindset and staying positive will give students a model of how to be flexible and adapt to change and accept that change. If we say, oh, we have to do this thing next and I'm really not looking forward to it I bet you aren't either. Then it might drag the kid down, right, or if we say. Okay, and you're going to middle school and I think middle school is awful. It was for me, and it's probably going to be for you so just get through it. I might not help them. But if we say really positive Wednesday. Oh my gosh, I know that you love math class and we've been doing math for a while, but it's time for us to go to music class. And it'll be a nice change of pace and you know, I were here we go. I think it's a positive tone to everything, or if we use the middle school example.  And middle school is full of brand new experiences and new friends to meet, and I can't wait for you to get to have this experience in your life. I think middle school, you know, like that voice that they hear from us becomes their inner voice so we always have to portray that positively, and, you know, have an excited tone for them. I look at it as like setting the stage you know we're setting the stage for what's either coming next. What's what's going to happen, like as they keep it in positive I think setting that stage is important for these kids. Yep. Yep. There's a lot of different transitions. You can kind of think of those grade level transitions from preschool to kindergarten, and then elementary school to middle. I think, especially that elementary to middle school. Gosh, that's a that's a big shift for them they're going from having you know one classroom to be in most of the day to switching classes having a locker having to take lots of supplies with them, having many teachers in a day instead of mostly one teacher in a day. I didn't say this back with the preschool to kindergarten but holy cow I give those teachers a ton of credit for all that the teachers in Paris do to help kindergartners through that transition and help them learn rules and procedures. I think maybe now that our preschools are in with our public schools that that might ease that transition a little bit. Sometimes they switch from middle to high school. Sometimes they're switching different teachers, depending on the size of the school they might have the same teachers and it might not be a huge transition. And then from high school to college and career we have to start getting them ready to be those independent living on their own kind of kids. What are they, if they're going to college are they disciplined enough to do their studies on their own and things like that. But then we have transitions that happen every day, like in the classroom when we go from one activity to another, that's a transition. And then we go from class to class. So for older kids you know the one the bell rings and, you know, they are with another teacher for 45 minutes or whatever. But also class to class for elementary might mean going to a special class like art or music or PE. But we see that add a lot with that teacher to teacher transition and with with each teacher, you might have different ways of doing things, different rules or procedures. Many of our schools are now PBIS schools. And so they're really dedicated to making sure those transitions maybe aren't so hard on kids. Maybe there are some real consistencies from one classroom to another, but definitely just even the style of each teacher could be different. And then right now I think it's very timely to start talking about you know those transitions from being at home to being at school. You know the summer to school year, but now we have that school year to summer. So a lot of structure in life during the school year and they're transitioning to summer where there's maybe more or less structure, more time to pick what to do. But some kids crave that structure and some kids crave the predictability of school. So I've definitely come across several kids in my career that aren't really happy when summer vacations rolling around. They like the adults that they see at school they like seeing their friends, the consistency and so that's a transition of mindset and activity and things like that for the summer. So let's see here. So there are some research proven strategies to guarantee success. One of them is school and family partnerships. So the more that schools can talk with families and families talk back with the schools and really view each other as partners. And hey, we're all out there for the same goal and that's to make your students successful your child successful. The better off we are for students. And so when they view their teachers and their schools on the same team. That's a good thing. You know, I guess I always tried to emphasize that with the parents from my classroom that I wasn't, I wasn't the bad guy, you know, sometimes if I had bad news to deliver it was out of concern because we're all here to make our students succeed. Make sure that they succeed. When students are part of programs that promote academic and social emotional competence. That's when we can guarantee some some success too. So, we're not in it just about learning our, you know, our core subjects and the academics but also kids need to learn about their emotions. Part of that is that flexible thinking and being able to transition. And the last is some continuity so when we have continuity from grade level to grade level or from the classroom that's when our students succeed most. So we think about all those important parts as we talk about transitions. So when we think about transitioning focus here. I want to help students reduce the stress of transitions. So, can anybody offer up what might be stressful in a transition. I'm going to let Tammy calling people because she can see them I see maybe I can get pictures up here. Anybody want to share, maybe I want to go first. What could be stressful about a transition. What do you think Tammy what do you think. I think sometimes the fear of the unknown you know especially if they're going to a different building or a different teacher I think they maybe don't know the expectations, and that can be very scary. I think so too like I think just yeah at that new grade level or a new building. Oh my gosh that's a little intimidating I remember when I was a sixth grade student and I was going up to the middle school high school, and just thinking I have to take my books around with me and I have all these new teachers and I heard that somewhere crabby. And, you know, there's a lot to worry about you, you've heard some things but you're not sure. I think sometimes it's stressful to transition from one activity to another during school because maybe you've just gotten busy working on one activity or one job that you have. And then all of a sudden the teacher tells you you've got two minutes left and it's like but I was so caught up in this. What now I'm going to forget and I'm going to lose my place and I'm not going to be a successful with it. Sometimes those kids that like if they want to keep going because they like completion, if they can't complete it, you know wanting to get that. Yes, I think that's that's important to. And sometimes I think that transitions often involves some social time that can be desirable for some but for some kids they get stressed out. I don't always get along with my peers at school and now I've got to go be around them in the hallway or oh gosh it's recess time and that's super social and I'm going to have to worry about who I'm going to play with her at that transition to lunchtime. Now I have to worry about who I'm going to sit by and what I'm going to talk about and oh I'm worried because I don't like the lunch the school lunch today and there can be all sorts of transitions there too. So we'll talk a little bit about some visual steps for planning transitions where we can help take some of that stress away by letting them think through it and think about their reactions. And then we also that end goal for all of our work with kids is that they're able to transfer those skills to different situations and environments. Okay, so, hey, you've learned that you get stressed out right before the bells going to ring. What's a what's a way a strategy that we could use though that we don't get so stressed out. And then maybe that happens at home too. We could transfer that same strategy to home so maybe right before bedtime you get really stressed out because you're going to have to transition to bedtime. So these are the things that we're doing here at school that might also work there. And when we teach kids to transfer their skills. What we're doing is teaching them those life skills that they can carry with them in any situation. And really isn't that the goal where we're trying to help them prepare to be really productive adults. All right so this has kind of little prints. If you're like me you might have to squint a little bit this is the biggest I could make it for this page. These are some transition strategies to prevent tantrum so we're thinking this is more for our younger students. But I, you know, I want you to think if you work with older students and how this could bend or work a little bit with them to I mean I'm sure that they can. So, one is to make it clear how much longer the activity will last. Okay, so things like countdown timers are just huge for kids. If a kid struggles with timing of anything of taking too long or rushing through things. The power of a little timer from the dollar store or Walmart, just on their desk is huge. There's also digital timers you can project up to like the projector in the classroom that can help all kids. And because I think, you know, those warnings give warnings like hey did you notice it's at two minutes, we've got two minutes left for this or we have five minutes left. Really helps kids when we get into a frenzy. No we got to put it away we're late we got to hurry up just shoving away and let's go go go. That's when we kind of make them have a hurried sense and we induce some stress for our kids. And then make sure that kids understand what's coming next, you know, okay, we're going to do this next this activity next, do you know what that means. And sometimes it's like really nice to have that agenda on the board with some pictures even for the littler kids need pictures older kids just need to know what is coming next all day. I don't think any of us would like to be thrown into a situation where we only knew two minutes before the next activity what the next activity would be right we kind of kind of schedule our day in our minds and that's nice to do. I'm number three is definitely geared towards littler kids like to have some sort of transition objects so sometimes it's a toy or a little token or something like that, that they could bring with them. Number four is don't rush it and you know if kids have trouble with transitions. Know that student enough to know, hey, I better start transitioning earlier with them like the rest of the class might just need two minutes to transition. This kid may might need five or even a few more, because this kid needs a break, which we're going to talk about next take a sensory break maybe they need to walk out to the water fountain and get a drink in between activities. Or maybe they need a little movement break where they go out to the hall and just walk up and down the hall one time, or sometimes there's all different sensory objects like kush balls and they just need to go out and pull on the kush ball for a little bit or feel some velcro on the wall. Alright, so then we're going to be prepared so we're going to structure and consistency are best for those kids. So you think about is there a kid who has a hard time with transitions. Let's think about this what if they do and I'm at like one time in the morning, they get pulled for speech right to work with a speech teacher.  They, I don't know I'm just making up the schedule. That's a lot of transitions and a little bit of time. So could we make speech but up right to PE time so it's one transition instead of back to the room and then back out again. Or how could we work that title time so it's a little bit closer to another activity so it's not so choppy for our day. We're going to really be prepared but that consistency is really nice and being organized and that the kids know what's coming next that we we aren't really helped or skelter with our days. In practice makes perfect so we're going to talk more about social stories and having some repeated practice and a little bit that can help young and old kids. And make wait time less frustrating. So for especially for little kids things like a song and fidget toys like they say their movement breaks and timers can really help them. And they, they really do talk about using some things like songs, like, for example, with little kids they use the cleanup song. And that just helps signal that it's a transition time and that's what we always do when we hear our song. Again practice the art of distraction so you can try songs or bubbles or movement activities that help them move from point A to point B maybe they're going to bounce a ball as they walk down the hall to a class. Or maybe that's when they get to use their sensory object as they walk down the hall. And then, again, having a way to signal that the activity is over so either that song like a cleanup song, or another way of signaling it in my classroom I had some wind chimes, and I would just, you know, make them ring. And it was a nice peaceful sound. It wasn't like a big loud buzzer, like the alarm clock or something wasn't like that. So they'd like to hear that. So we'll talk about some other strategies here that we can use with kids of all ages. One is cue cards. It's kind of like a cheat sheet for the desired focus and attention. And for older kids, it could be a checklist, you know, that they go through hey, I need to transition to this class. These are the things I need to do. I need to write my planner. I need to gather my materials. I need to check in with the teacher before I leave. They're going to check and make sure I have my homework. Cue cards can be for little kids very picture based, right? So what does it look like when I'm transitioning from centers to be at my seat or something like that. Again, we talked a little bit about that countdown timer. It really helps kids just kind of mentally prepare for what's coming next. Google, you can just do timer. You can just search timer in there and it'll come up. There's some kind of fun, fun ones like timer bomb and then Kagan has some different timers. Oh gosh, anything from an hourglass to, I don't know, many others. And one other one is called triage.  The triage was basically we were going to get to that kid and help them through the situation before the situation became a problem. So we were being very proactive rather than reactive. So kids meet with an adult to talk about a transition or other need that they might have before it happens. So for instance, one of my students had autism and going to art class was really just hard for him. That was a hard transition. And so I started to meet with him before he would go in the room and find motor skills were just one of his challenges. And so during art class, all the cutting and gluing and drawing, it just was, it was trying for him.  And he said, um, All I can do is my best work. And I'd say, yep, you want to do your best work and your best is always enough. And I'd say, and what happens if you start to get frustrated. And he'd say, well, I'm going to count to 10. And I said, and what if you get really frustrated right on the edge. He'd say, well, I'm going to tell the art teacher that I need to go take a drink. So I'm going to walk out in the hallway and count up when I go. And I'm going to count back as I go back to the classroom. And, you know, we just talked through some of those situations, and he seemed to do a lot better and I didn't have him returning to class and things like that, wanting to be out of the art room. So triage can really work. And I think triage in that sense also, when I talk kids like at the end of the year, especially kids who had behavior issues I felt. You know, we struggled at the beginning of the year to find out what worked right what worked that was going to help them be more successful during the day. And when we could have them go and meet their new teacher, maybe at the end of the school year and start to form a bond. That really helped. So if they're going to work with a new para or a new teacher, they could go in and maybe have lunch together or help with a project or something like. Even at the week, like the week before school starts, sometimes I'd have a student come up and join me and we'd put together a bulletin board or play a game or something like that where it was just something kind of fun so that we could talk a little bit. They could get to know me, see the classroom a little bit so they could kind of start to prepare for a change and ease some of their fears. And we talked about practice before but so again, it's visiting that school at a calm time or the classroom. And when I say calm time I mean things aren't in a rush, like, I remember feeling like I was always running a marathon when I taught in the classroom. And, you know, there weren't at transition time, there wasn't a lot of time to like really think through all the steps and whatever it was just like go go go come on time for lunch we got to walk down the hall. So, you know, no dilly dally. And it's nice for kids to come to a situation where they can just calmly think through it so bring them in when it's not lunchtime but we're going to practice like it is lunchtime right what are the things we do. And we might need to run through that a few times if the student struggles. And, you know, it might even be, I think sometimes we use this as almost like a consequence to a behavior, but it doesn't have to be if we do it before right. Or if we notice hey, you know, I noticed you were struggling a little bit transitioning at our bathroom break time to being in the classroom. Let's just why I want you to just come over and for five minutes we're just going to practice that you're not in trouble with this but I just think that maybe we should think through our thoughts in our in our behaviors. And when it's not time so that you can start to do that when it is bathroom break time. And for older kids this can be done too. Like, hey, I noticed that the hallway was a rough transition for you today. Can we just can we have a chat and just kind of discuss what kinds of things you could do during that time. And then thinking ahead to high school, you know, like say it's a middle school kid and they're going to become a high school kid have that talk with them. We just expect kids to know how to transition and do things and move on but lots of kids struggle and so that's what we need to slow down and help them through and have those conversations. Ask them what things that they're anxious about what things that they feel good about what times that they'd like some help brainstorming about. And then there's those signals so things like songs we've talked about. And chimes and some people have a xylophone in their room and they play the xylophone as a warning of like a two minute warning and then. And for my class sometimes that meant clean up and then I play the the chimes again at the end of the cleanup time. Some teachers have a nice clear signal like they switch the lights off. They switch the lights on before 10 seconds and then switch lights back on and that shows it's time to end our activity. And then again those time warnings. And then repetition so we're going to use those same procedures regularly. Help our kids out by not switching things up all the time. If it does always switch on yet and you don't know what the rule is now. That's where some anxiety might creep in. So we talked about some social stories or visual cues. So this is one here smooth transitions okay. So it's it's talking about what does it look like when we're going to transition. And it gives all those picture clues along the way so it says sometimes transitions are hard, because I need to stop what I'm doing, there's a stop sign. Sometimes transitions are hard because I get confused. I need to stay calm during transitions. So hopefully it would even have some ways to stay calm. My teacher will help me transition with many tools like a schedule a timer or a warning. And if I need help during a transition, I will raise my hand, or I will get my para to take a break in the hallway with me. So I think the picture clues are nice, especially for our younger kids. But for older kids, it can totally be done too. So I don't want to count this out. You know, for older kids, we might not call it a social story, but it's like we're going to plan through what's what's it look like at that transition. If you have a kid that gets in arguments in the hallway, or doesn't gets from place A to place B fast enough, they might need help. Okay, so I'm going to challenge you to try one. Okay, so to think for a couple minutes about a time that you notice a student or many students struggling with a transition. Maybe if you have a piece of paper in front of you, you could just jot it down on how you would help them create a story. Think about some of those pictures. I'm going to turn this screen just for a moment so you can see that one. Would anybody like to share something about a time that students struggle with transitions and what you might include on a social story. Right or wrong just anybody have a situation that they want to share. I was thinking about the transition from a classroom to a lunchroom to recess in the voice level. We might talk about in the classroom our voices are small voices. In the lunchroom our voices are medium voices and outside our voices could be loud voices if we want them to be, and kind of talk about that transition I might have like even, you know, like the little sign on all of our digital devices for how loud our speaker is. We might show that to the kids in those different places and show how they can transition their voice. I was thinking about when they get off the bus in the morning because that's kind of a definite totally switching. You have the buzz really talk and speak and whatever and coming into this school you know not going to be set early on. For high school kids I think even just the hallway to the classroom hallway to the classroom is a big transition of knowing that when we can talk and things and when we have to be quieter. And then there's a whole bunch of examples we could use in the classroom so for we were thinking high school and stuff if we talk about you know they're transitioning from taking notes and doing something cold class to now I have to do some independent work and what does that look like. And how can I be productive and not just sit there and not do my work right. Maybe that's a problem with some older kids I don't know. Okay. We'll go on here. So, watching my time and think we don't have a ton of time we'll think about these problems here. There's a couple scenarios. In elementary a student is struggling transitioning back to the classroom after recess how can we help her. And in secondary a student is struggling transitioning from a hands on industrial arts classroom to English class how can we help him. I think, think of either one of those scenarios. Does anybody have something that they would tell the elementary student and they could work on with the elementary student. They could you could unmute yourself if you wanted to talk to the whole group. And if I candy I just toss it to you for doing that. Okay. So, I'm going to turn it over to you. I'm going to turn it over maybe some of you work with students that you help transition back to the classroom from recess. I always thought the bathroom break and drink break time were good transitions, where they could start to wind down. They've been pretty amped up running all over the playground and now we get to wind down a little bit. And I did read a lab with them. And so they got to just calm down and refocus, and that seemed to be a good time for them. How about a student who's struggling transitioning from hands on industrial arts classroom to English class. Any ideas there a little checklist for what what's expected at class might be helpful for that student. And maybe even, you know, if they're taking notes or something like what does that look like what is taking notes look like an English class, or maybe they're reading a novel. And so, just a quick rundown of what are we going to pay attention to in this novel now, and how are we going to make sure that we remember what we read, you know, and just a quick little run down through those. Okay, we have another scenario here. We have a student transitioning from elementary to middle school, and how can we help them prepare and a student transitioning from middle school to high school how could we help them prepare. So, my wonderful participants, I really hope that you could think about this for a couple minutes, and then share out an idea. And when you're ready, you can just unmute and share away. I guess here at Stuart we have like our elementary kids. When they go into junior high, we have like a day where they go around with the high school, yeah the high school kids are the junior high kids I should say, and then they show them the classrooms, the teachers which they of course already know but it's easier for them to go into the classrooms when they do get into junior high, knowing what to expect the teachers telling me know what they are supposed to be bringing to class every day and what is expected of them. I think that that helps our kids here by doing that every year, and we always do that like at the end of the year. Yeah, that's such a good practice for them. I taught in a building where I taught third grade and they were coming to our building new in third grade. And even just like practicing how to go to lunch and how to get a tray and know their lunch number and some things like that was just huge for them to come see it. I noticed Madison unmuted so they're ready to share something with us right. Well, the elementary since our school so small and everything we do the same thing to as soon as our grade go from from kindergarten to fifth grade so when our fifth graders in a few weeks they'll be going up to the middle school to see how it is. Yep. And maybe see their locker. That's a big change just having a locker and. Yeah. Yes. Good. I think those visit days are huge for a transition and just kind of ease their minds and get them excited to I think. All right, so again, our goal through all of this is transfer we want the kids to learn these skills so that if they're if they're at softball practice in the summer, and they have to transition from warm ups to batting practice I don't know that they're able to use the same skills to, you know, transfer over and make them successful there, but then not just as in childhood but also throughout life. How can I help myself transition when I know that maybe that's something I'm not great at. What can I do to make it better. I have two resources here for you on the presentation which is available at the para website bit dot Lee slash pairs of the issue eight. So you could access those layers if you later if you need to. And then Tammy's going to lead us through some fun stuff. And I'll just let you go through this slide step when I'm ready so we've been talking all in each of our sessions about self care. You know it's really easy so yeah I know what that is I know how to do that, but it's another thing to actually put it into practice so we're just bringing it to the forefront one more time about self care for the spring and going into the summer. One thing is just we put it together just about eight things fill your plate with spring greens, you know, get plenty of vegetables and get plenty of greens celebrate a top 10 spring day. I think we had that this past weekend Easter break was beautiful I just. Those are my exact words top 10 day. So you know find one of those top 10 days and do something fun for yourself. Meditate contemplator spend time in quiet reflection. And again you know I'm not a big meditator but I like quiet reflection so I always go to somebody's fun place quiet so I can read one of my favorite books or read a passage or read scripture so I think there's lots of things that you can do to reflect on yourself and your situation. I'm going to interrupt for a second I have to say I lean more towards that meditate side because I, especially when I taught in the classroom in May, I would get so. Anxiety ridden of all the things that had to be done before the end of the school year that my right I would start to twitch and I knew as soon as my I was switching that I better write a list out but also that meditating and just clearing my mind every day really helps me. Yes, yeah, there's so many things we have to go to do. The other one is get growing maybe you like to plant a vegetable garden, maybe you just like to send flowers. It doesn't maybe you want to do a community garden I know like a Norfolk has a community garden. I don't know if other small towns do but. Are they fantastic. I just think it's a way to bring people together, but also to get your mind busy and off of something else. Ladies, our question. What, what's the difference like between a DD and ADHD. Okay, so I'm there. They're both related. The age stands for hyperactivity. I was told in college that there is no difference but um, I don't know if that's the truth or not but I think sometimes we see those distracted kids as ADD, and maybe that's what we would refer to it as that kind of, they're distracted and kind of daydreaming and kind of not attending. Yeah, you know, they're maybe not so like all of the place hyper but the ADHD brings in the hyperactivity. So they might be, you know, distracted but also just fidgety and can't sit still and have to always constantly be moving you're tapping a pencil. The ADHD is more your kids that are more. They might not be as active they might not be the hyper. They're just more, maybe, I'm not paying attention more somber in the classroom. Uh huh. Yes. I'm a student that literally when I was talking, I would be talking and teaching class, and I'd see him looking down and he'd look up and go, you know, like he was, he was literally somewhere else. That's a good question. Thank you for asking us that. Yes. They get confusing sometimes I think. Uh huh. So, you know, I think the subcair is opening a window and watering a plant or two.  So good that they have. They don't allow air circulation, I can tell that with our house, you know, we have south windows are better. That's where more of the circle. Open up. And just make sure that let some fresh air in. I even loved also that always when it starts getting so nice that I wash our sheets, I hang them out. I love that smell of clean fresh sheets from the clothesline. I love that. So bringing some of that outside air in and get outside and get moving doesn't mean you have to run walk, ride a bike. Just like I said, just, just get some activity. I think that's good too. It's nice to enjoy this weather. Spring clean your home or office or car. A declutter and I started doing that with my closet. It seems like this time of year I've thrown things everywhere and oh my gosh, it gets to be such a pit. So I also makes you feel better to just getting organized. I'm knowing that you've accomplished something to go through that with spring cleaning. I love that goals for the season, you know, I love the saying a goal is a dream with the deadline. So, you know, it's just kind of nice now going into the summer you know or some things that you want to have done or something that you've been dreaming about or taking that risk, stepping out of your box. I think that's kind of nice to just kind of keep ourselves motivated to looking forward to something I think that's really important as well. I think it's kind of nice to create this little bingo self care. You can do it at work you know if you put this on a bulletin board or if you have it in your in a class. Anytime you complete one of these just signed your name and once you get three in a row, or up and down or diagonal, maybe have a little prize you can still do it till the from the end of the year. I think it's just kind of nice to have it in the work room. You can challenge yourself for others. Not anything too, too tough, but just to remind you again to take time for yourself. It's easy we know it has to happen but I'm, I'm as guilty as the next person I don't always do it. So, and again it gets us through to the end of the year. This might be fun to do with the other pairs in your building, you know, I'll do a bingo for self care and then once you get your bingo celebrate together. Yeah, yep, exactly. Any other questions.  If you think of something later. And I just wanted to remind you to save the date that we'll be back we hope to be in person this August and have a fun day with lots of fun activities lots of great learning and a good lunch right I think Batman and Superman here eating popsicles. We need that in the summertime, but our para training day at ESU eight is going to be August 11 from nine to three, and we can't wait and is sharing is Christie still on Christie, we're going to bring back the postcards. You missed the last time. I missed that.  It'll be a fun time one day always with Paris we admire you so much. So again, here are emails if you have any questions please let us know and I do have to say that this is Tammy slash para training because she's flying on to other superhero duties next year. And so I'm, I don't know you might be stuck with just plain old me. Well see me I'm going to be working with canvas, and you might have heard that that's a learning management system that so your schools use so I'll be doing more training with canvas. So I'll still be working with the issue but just issue to takes on that project so I might still be into their schools to see them. Yeah, hey that's pretty awesome and I thank you Tammy for all of your help over the years. Well, as I you.  Well Paris, we're at the end of our day and the end of the school year and we admire you for all that you do you work so hard.  Thanks for what you do. Take care of yourselves at the end of the year here, and we'll plan to see in August. I just want to tell you ladies you've done great and we've really appreciated you doing what you've done for us. Welcome. Thank you, thank you. You bet. All right, have a good night guys take care. Thank you. Have a great day. Thank you. Thank you.


Thanks so much for being here, really appreciate the time and our nice little drive around Detroit car interviews So why don't you tell us a little bit about why you're here at? Kubecon while I avoid going to Canada Because it's super easy to fall in the trap of getting in the tunnel apparently you can't get out again unless you go to customs I've heard this and I'm loving the signs that say tunnel to Canada. Yeah, it sounds more like an instruction Right, we want we want more immigration come to Canada Yeah, exactly. I still like the thing I tweeted about yesterday.  So the water is always on the you know, east side of me And having it on the south side and it's going to the wrong country. It's very confusing my brain Yeah, somebody did say that so they refer to the Canadians as our neighbors to the south. Yeah, right, right, right Yeah, I think being an American. I think it's a little bit more weirder for me, right, but So yeah, so tell me about Kubecon. What are you doing here? Yeah, so here all week So I've been doing ebpf day yesterday. Okay, that's it Then today we had a city and project meeting this afternoon Got a talk at service mesh con and then you know the main show right right week So and so how was the ebpf day was there like we're doing like a workshop or like was it more like meetings of the team or No, ebpf day was a co-located event. So we had presentations from people mostly end users I would say actually projects as well. Yeah I mean wrapped up with a really great panel of People it was run by Frederick His name begins with L It might be large in law but from TechCrunch and He had this fantastic panel of people talking about You know using ebpf in production people like New York Times and Google and Bell Canada nice speaking Canada. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, right and did you get like the turnout you were hoping for like was it You know all the people it wasn't bad. Yeah, I would say we actually had a bigger turnout in Valencia But I've got a feeling that there's more co-located events. Yeah, there's a competition. Yeah. Yeah, totally Yeah, there were a lot. Yes. Yeah, I was just looking at the list and like So many choices so many choices So the project meeting you're at this morning, what is what are you, you know focused on or what are you kicking around for? Yeah, so this was a new thing for for psyllium. I don't know if other projects have done it before but basically since he I've offered us a meeting room and and some time and said go for it So we publicized beforehand a document and said sign up here if you've got like a PR You want to discuss or a problem or you know, maybe a talk you want to give and you want to buy anything really and To be honest not that many people signed up and then loads of people turned up Yeah, we had a pretty packed room. We had to keep going out and getting more chairs, right? And yeah, some good discussions are going on. I've snuck out to come and do this Yeah, but we definitely appreciate it. It's we thought it'd be a lot of fun and so I was gonna ask so yeah, all I can picture is like a deli counter, right? You've taken the numbers for all the people who want to talk about things It's always hard to like I think although sometimes when you get a group of people who are Interested in a discussion around things like PRs or problems are having or whatever The conversations that just kind of spontaneously occur are almost better than most other scenarios because you have a bunch of people are really engaged You know, so so hopefully it'll Yeah, there were definitely some some good little you know groups gathering and talking about because we had a whole range of people who were new to So yeah, I'm who wanted an introduction and then we had people who had very specific problems that they wanted to discuss or PR that they wanted to get some help on so yes, it's some good conversations. Yeah. Yeah That's cool. Have you been to Detroit before? No, this is my first yeah, and what do you think have you enjoyed? Actually really nice. Yeah. Yeah, I have a friend who lives out in the suburbs took me out on a beautiful bike ride on Saturday, so I got to see all the beautiful trees and some amazing Like the architecture. There's so much for I yeah, I was I was really surprised by that myself. It's funny I am I'm staying in the What if they call the Renaissance center here that they're out. I'm told it's called the Rensen. Yeah I see that all over the place But I I walked in the building I was like this looks really familiar and I remembered I actually did a sales call to General Motors Like 15 years ago to the on-star and and it was in that building and I was like, oh, that's why it looks familiar But yeah, it is so different now Like kind of the city in general and I was talking to some of the locals and they were kind of saying the same thing It's just like how how much it it seems to have kind of come back But there's still a lot of you know a lot of open space, which you know, like still still waiting for recovery from the pandemic Maybe yeah, yeah, I definitely seen it a Variety of you know, you can you can see there's a lot of Disparate levels of ink, right? Yeah. Yeah, totally But yeah, it's pretty cool. And you know, I do like, you know Detroit's kind of not really in it anymore, but you know, you get the fall colors really well Up in kind of the northern. Yeah, you know, I think it's beautiful. Yeah Yeah, and but you said you actually took your bike ride out here on the Isle, right? Yeah Yeah, we drove about an hour outside of Detroit picked up a bike that I could borrow and then rode all the way back in Navigated the hotel and then came out to Bell Isle and rode around around here Well, at least you got to get a sense of the, you know, where the venue was Which is always nice I'm I have a panel on Wednesday and I was like trying to find on the map where exactly the talk is So I think I've got it, you know, I had to like color it in on the map So I could like remember but are you are you giving a talk this time? Yes, well, I'm part of the Cillian project updates to okay So and and that's a pretty straightforward set of updates and then this afternoon at service mesh con Oh, yeah, I'm hoping to have a demo for that one. So that's always a little bit more jeopardy. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, I have you have you taken having like recordings as a backup. I I've never I think I've done it once But I'm always like I'm just gonna go with it. I always so I'm going to have a recording, right, right I have about six hours to go. So there's still Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it'll be fine It's always more exciting to do it live anyway And you always what's nice though is that the crowd's always with you because they're just as terrified as you are And yeah, so everybody wants to see right and they want it to go well, right, right? So, you know, you at least you have a soft crowd normally So what it what will you be demoing? So service mesh essentially Cillian service mesh And we have a nice integration with some Grafana metrics. Okay It's a very simple, you know, but a demo app that's sitting behind Kubernetes ingress set up to be Of Cillian type so right Cillian service mesh is providing that ingress functionality and under the covers it programs envoy and then Get a nice service map inside of Grafana dashboard and get some really good metrics. Nice. Yeah I one of the things I it's funny on the on the insider show that you've done if you know You did before but also in the old level up show I used to it's like one of the things that Is so hard about using these, you know, kind of monitor distributed systems, right? It's like you really need those visuals to be able to wrap your head around what's actually going on Because it's so because the whole idea of it, right? It's it's distributed and somewhat disconnected But that means your brain has to like connect it all in your head and that's really hard So yeah, I really appreciate things like Grafana You know, which really at least for me help me wrap my head around it again But uh, yeah, so it's cool. You were saying that there's a bunch of new integration with Grafana. Yeah Yeah, that's sort of new news this week that Cillian and Grafana are Working together and we've got some really nice Integrations so not only can you export Cillian metrics into the Grafana dashboard, but we also have some Grafana Graphs and service maps and so on visible from inside the Hubble you are. That's cool So it works both ways right if you want it in the single pane of glass Yeah in Hubble it's there if you want it in the single pane of glass and Grafana is that right right?  Yeah, so At one level you think but surely Kubernetes is running applications and they're networked together right like They're already talking to each other. Yeah, the service mesh is giving you this kind of application layer layer seven Additional features so things like retries Load balancing so you can load balance across multiple instances of Whatever back-end service it is MTLS is a common feature that people want to see from service mesh and Observability is a huge thing and right you know But I think one of the things that we're quite keen on with Cillian service mesh is that a Lot of this functionality can be provided by the network and from an application Developers point of view they they shouldn't really have to care what's happening at right different layers of the network It should be my my service wants to talk to another service and I need this Kind of configuration or this level of retries or I want to roll out this canary deployment and So we're kind of seeing it as Three layers now. There's the data plane itself actual network connectivity passing packets around there's the At the top the configuration, you know, do you want to configure an ingress? Gateway do you want to configure gateway API? There's a lot of work going on in the It's called the gamma initiative gateway API sort of new version that will support service mesh abstractions like HDP routes, right? So you configure that and then in the middle there's What you could call a control plane, but increasingly I don't think that you know application developers need to care about right But this is the thing that's kind of wiring up how Proxies are configured. Yeah Kind of Kubernetes in general right the service mesh kind of in more specific, you know one of the things I really appreciate, you know being a long-time, you know application developer and I guess we're not going to go that way because the road is closed and here is a goose Yeah, who's busily crossing the road But we One of the things I really like is this kind of idea of we just want I just want to give You know the system a hint about what I want right rather than having it You know the number of times you have to go through an install guide and say okay So this is where the database is and this is where the web server is and here are the ports They're going to talk across and all this stuff and I don't like I just I just wanted to you know I just want to kind of describe it and then let it figure it out And so it's one of the things I really appreciate kind of about them You know more this kind of modern idea of like you're just going to describe the system You know, I really think it gets back to like even like puppet really was big part of this where you had this I'm going to describe what I want, you know, and then the software actually makes it true, right? You know which at least for me is is much better and then on top of that keeps it true Which I think is a part people don't fully appreciate how hard that is over time. Yes Yes, that kind of state reconciliation thing, which I think is the the thing that makes Kubernetes What it is right a level above the things that came before it is this constant reconciliation of Here's my desired state. Here's the actual state, right, right and not relying on humans to actually make that state Yeah, right. Yes, you know, which like said, I I really appreciate it You know, the other thing is I think it also Let's us concentrate on you know things that are you know for lack of better term higher value, right? So we can start to think about hey Can I make this more like an event-driven system, you know Or you know in integrating like serverless and all those things because I can I can just put my code where I need to and then You know, I just have to kind of configure it and then it just works, right? Which I think is huge With the service mesh. Have you been? You know, I guess one of the things I'm still trying to wrap my head around is like I feel like Multiple Kubernetes clusters is weird Like as in I I want it to be just one thing But this is a I guess kind of an ongoing struggle is like there's there's people on both sides of this fence where it's like No, I want to have all these different clusters, right? And I but I want to treat them as one or you know, whatever Do you have any kind of feeling about this might just crazy that I think that there should just be one So it's one of the features that a lot of users really like about psyllium And it's almost too easy. So it's called cluster mesh, right? And you have your services and you can annotate them just say well, this service is a global service Mm-hmm, and you have to go around and say for each cluster like, you know, here is My service, I don't know. I'll call it tree, right? I'm seeing a lot of trees. So here's my tree service You know, and I want that to be a global service and in another cluster I've also got the tree service and I will mark that as a global service and Cluster mesh kind of communicates these shared services I keep running in the closed roads Like wait, so first of all the navigation should be helping me with this problem second Why are all the roads closed? This is the adventure of doing the interview in the car is that we'll interrupt for navigation problems Oh, yeah, I'll get back to cluster mesh. Yeah, so you have these services They're essentially the same service. They just happen to exist in more than one cluster And you can mark them as you know, I want kind of local affinity. So if there is an available Instance of it running locally, so I'd prefer to use that But if there isn't I will use one in another cluster, right? And then it as I say it because you're just annotating services. It kind of seems a little bit too And I think that's a really great example of how the network can provide a lot of functionality For you that users shouldn't have to worry about you know users shouldn't have to sort of think about Like which bits of network are talking to each other, right making it at a service level, which is pretty much an application level is That makes sense to me. Yeah. Yeah, no that I definitely agree. I mean it all kind of comes back to that I guess the Like that's a super nice feature because I think that's at least for me right part of my problem about getting my head Wrapped around it. It's like I don't I don't want to think about the fact that there's multiple clusters, right? I just want I want my service available all the time As close to the user as possible and you probably want those multiple clusters so you can do things like yeah As close to the user as possible or like availability zones or right right, but yeah, yeah other than that You're not deliberately saying this this one has to go there Yeah, I mean I suppose you might want to have different services in different clusters for isolation reasons, but then you probably You know the multi cluster thing is less of a You know, they actually don't want it. Yeah, you don't really want them communicating in general Yeah, and maybe the you know the air gap model, right? Yeah, but yeah I think I think the most common example. I've kind of heard it's around security but you know at least for me like I you know I worked on a system which had You know it was one of those ones where it was used around the world But its biggest load was at 9 a.m. Ish right at whatever time zone because that's when everybody logged into it And so to make it actually perform we actually had all this complicated stuff and this was well before communities existed But all this complicated stuff to spin up a bunch of hardware, you know essentially at 850 Whatever time zone so that you know they'd be able to handle the load and then you know and then spin it back down again and Being able to you know essentially You know you have not only this kind of management of where is the service available or the functionality available? but then also like You know can you build in scheduling such that that's also as sophisticated, you know, can you you know? I really want to see one of the things I've been Toying around with this, you know essentially getting into like AI machine learning for scheduling You know which I think would be super interesting because I want to you know I want I want the computer to notice that there's all these logins at 9 a.m. And preemptively spin up a bunch of containers to prepare for that because I think you know it seems obvious to me One of the first things I did with containers we had a startup that was called micro scaling and it was this idea of auto scaling before yeah, yeah, and using kind of control theory, I think it was called, you know Kind of trying to predict, you know based on how demand's changing like how many more right right gonna have to spin I like how fast is demand changing and based on that? Well that I mean that's kind of the problem with current auto scaling, right? Is that by the time the auto scaling starts?  You know, of course completely joking And you might be better off with the rule that just says, you know at 850 will spin up right right double the number of instances So coming back to KubeCon a little bit Is there any particular talk or you know is there somebody you're really you know? Glad to have seen or going to see that, you know is a you know a particular driver for this particular KubeCon for you I'm not gonna call out anybody specifically, but it's just so great to see people in person You know I've already run into a few people that I haven't seen in person for a couple of years And it's great to have the opportunity to see people face-to-face again Well, I was some of that in Valencia, but there's a whole whole lot more. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, well, I ran into Chris Short yesterday Who I did a twitch show for like a year and a half every week with him I was on that we were on the same team yesterday was the first day I met him in person. Wow. Yeah, so it was super It was super interesting We of course had had the discussion about the fact that he was super tall with the last name short So I was at least expecting him to be quite tall But you know because I'm not that tall I'm like 5'10 right and so so that was interesting But yeah, also, I think I've now I think I've now met more people here that I've been talking to for the last two years That I had never met in person then I have met people in person that I have met in person before Yeah, yeah, it's super complicated, but yeah, it's not crazy though. It's so weird Yeah, and not everybody's here because yeah, we're still in three shows The main event kicks off tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's you know It's still easy to kind of go and register for your daily sticker But yeah, it's it's been shaping up pretty cool I wish I was staying the whole week, but I have to get back to give lecture on Thursday So yeah, so I can't stay the whole time, which is too bad But you know you do what you can it's funny because now, you know I've moved out of industry into academia about whatever a year and a half ago and The schedule is all wrong You know, it's like it's really funny It's like the academic conferences are kind of lined up with the school year And all the industry conferences are like a right smack dab in the middle of the semester And so it's kind of interesting and it's kind of what I've been trying to figure out is like, you know Is there is there a way we could you know fix this somehow because I would like to see more kind of academic people at cube con Yeah, you know, but like I know for me I had to like get coverage for a lecture, you know, it's kind of a big deal for me to travel right now Yeah, and so you know, it's kind of interesting in the ebpf world. We have It seems to me anyway that there's a lot more overlap between what's happening in academia. Yeah. Yeah, and we quite often get submissions from Students or graduate students and you know people who are working on I don't know PhDs doing things with ebpf. So yeah, it's definitely You know an overlapping interest right, right, no, definitely I mean, you know, it's like one of the things that I never really knew anything about till I joined boss university Is this concept of multi-party computation or secure multi-party computation? Which is Like I was like, I've never even Like talked about this before but so there's a couple of experts on my, you know in my department um, and what it is is like um, it's I want to compute something like, you know, the average Of a set of numbers, but you don't want to share your information with me And I don't want to share your my information with you and I don't also want to share any information with a third party Like there's no holder of the information. Right. Um, and so Uh, it's basically so what you can do is you can kind of the example that was given to me And I don't tell it very well, but um is like Say we both got a grade on a test, right? We want to know how the class Will how we did as a group on average So what we can do is you take an your number and you add an arbitrary number to it And then kind of tell me the total and then we kind of go around the group And then you keep adding it up and then you can take the average of that and you'll get the right average Once you withdraw all the arbitrary numbers Right, but I never see your grade right and and we don't have to have a third party that we trust that holds the grade either Right, um, which is, you know, what I think of as the norm normal way of doing that, right? But yeah, so they did a It was a like a front page boston globe article using like some of the professors from pu to do the Basically, it was a bunch of research around the average pay for women in boston versus men Okay And obviously, you know a lot of companies didn't want to share that information And so that was the technique they used there was another one too that I think is super interesting is they Boston was trying to figure out how to make ride-sharing safer in that when they pull over To like give them spots so they wouldn't be basically double parked in the middle of the screen. Okay. Um, and uh Uber and Lyft, they wanted their data, but uber and lyft don't want to share their data with anybody about where their drop-offs are But so they could figure it out by this same technique by using, uh, you know, I don't know exactly the details of how it worked, but um Yeah, and so I found out that um the bar that's like five blocks from my house Is the single biggest drop-off location for uber and lyft in the entire city. Wow I was like, I knew the place was popular, but like holy, you know No wonder there's all of these cars all there, you know and lying down the street I've not come across how you do those calculations, but I have come across the problem a little bit in So I'm involved with this organization called open uk, which is trying to advocate for more use of open source and open data and one of the I guess meetings that I went to there was a discussion about Yeah, how You might have essentially sovereign data or industry data that you Want to be able to collaborate on without actually sharing the data. So yeah, that's exactly what this does It's super neat. The I mean there are some challenges about like what kind of results you can get to But that's where the research is going. Like, you know, they're trying to solve as many of those as they possibly can You know at the moment But uh, yeah, so you can do some calculations, but you can't do everything you might want to but yes still I was like That is it's like brilliant. It's really interesting But uh, yeah, so if open uk wants to get involved with So part of the other hat I wear at the u is we do this experiential learning program called spark Where students work on projects for like external parties. So like it ends up being mostly like local government and nonprofits But like one of the ones we're working on is for this organization called museums moving forward, which is trying to First estimate the equity at museums right now just on like staffing But I think ultimately they're interested in like art and stuff as well And so they're going to use this mpc technology to do so And our spark students, you know, so undergraduates and graduate students are building the software So it's kind of cool But speaking of open uk as well. I just saw a tick tock from a guy running for mayor of toronto Who was advocating? Much more use of open source And that's like part of his platform. I was like, that's very cool But yeah, that is cool. Was he thinking of it as code Data transparency more as um, actually of of like saving money Um of the you know, like why are we why is every city building the same software?  I worked on a system years ago for the state of new york Um, and I don't know if it's still true, but if you build software for the state of new york It's required by state law that any other place in new york can have the software for free Because it basically it's open source within the state And uh, which I was like, why isn't that true for like any software that gets built custom, you know for a You know government entity, right? You know, because taxpayers paid for it, you know, um, but uh, I don't know if I'm supposed to like wait for this light Or because there's no there's no other way to go, right? Yeah, I'm going yeah, I thought at first this was a line of cars waiting, but no, they're just parked there See it's always an adventure when we drive When you've done this a few a few more times will be a little simpler. I uh, yeah I think my my experience with driving around boston makes it uh, so that I have a little bit more experience with craziness Um, all right. Well, uh, why don't we wrap the interview and just kind of say hit thanks so much for coming and we really appreciate it. Uh, and uh Yeah, absolute pleasure. Thank you for tour of Bella. Yeah


When I say the name Paul George, be honest, what's the first word that comes to mind? Way off is the side of the backboard We're all guilty of it Recency bias prisoner of the moment echo chambers things that are all prevalent on social media in the year 2021 if you so much as try and compliment the man This is usually what ensues in the comment section But if we're gonna get our jokes off on Paul George at his low points We have to be willing to give respect when the tables turn PG-13 is having a career season After single-handedly leading the Clippers to a comeback victory in Portland He was not only averaging 23.8 points per game on 48 43 89 shooting splits But career highs in assists per game and a true shooting percentage Which is a number two percent higher than his previous best season now I could throw numbers at you all day and let's be honest They don't matter to 99 out of a hundred people walking down the street Why is that? Well first and foremost after what went down against Damian Lillard in that playoff series and Then in the bubble blowing the 3-1 lead to the Nuggets Fans of the NBA just aren't going to care what this man does in the regular season Paul George isn't the first nor is he going to be the last The NFL had Peyton Manning before he finally hoisted the Lombardi Trophy the NHL had the Washington Capitals MLB the Oakland A's Still hell nobody trusted the Dallas Mavericks as far as they could throw them in the 2000s after what Baron Davis's warriors did to them, but somebody's got to ask the question Do we unfairly expect too much from this man? The Paul George I remember took the Indiana Pacers to the brink of the NBA Finals twice against LeBron's Miami Heat The Paul George I remember suffered one of the most devastating leg injuries ever caught on film That would keep every single one of us from walking properly again, let alone competing at a championship level Now he certainly doesn't help himself sometimes We saw those Instagram comments with Dame He made his bed and he's got to sleep in it But you are crazy if you don't think this man is talented enough to fulfill his revenge toward destiny To illustrate how Paul George's game has evolved and can finally translate to the postseason I'm gonna kick it to coach Nick from b-ball breakdown for the X's and O's Thanks, Rob, and you're right. Paul George is a bad man oozing with talent and if we're looking at how he's evolved this year I've got two words for you Isolation We all remember him complaining about his role in Doc's offense last year and Tai Lu was clearly listening He's reduced the number of times he's off ball coming off screens and replace them with Isolations 37% of his isos end up as three-pointers and he's off the charts Making them at a 53.3% clip and he doesn't care if he forces a switch to a smaller guard and just shoots right over the Top or putting a big man through the torture chamber of a vicious crossover dribble into a dagger of a deep shot He loves to go through his legs as the last dribble before pulling up And I wonder if this will be something defenders will key in on in the playoffs to make it harder for him to make these But judging by how often he's nailing them with almost no space to get them off I'm not sure it would even matter. It's clear This was the flow PG was talking about and it's like a river flowing through the mountains We know the mountain that he has declined because he's been there before and it's steep But if winning titles was easy, everyone would do it. You don't have to believe in Paul George You don't even have to like him. I just ask if he does get to the promised land that what he accomplished This season and overcame in previous ones to get there Doesn't get overlooked