Transcript

Hi there everyone, today, I’m pleased to welcome Rachael Thrash to the podcast, Senior Director of Education and Innovation at Big Bad Boo Studios and author of Let the Learners Lead (Routledge, May 2026). Rachael works with schools and global leaders to bring Big Bad Boo’s story-based social-emotional learning and citizenship programs into classrooms around the world. Those programs have reached more than 3 million children globally, including children in post-conflict settings through partnerships with UNICEF.

This episode also marks a meaningful milestone for SENIA, as Big Bad Boo has recently become one of our partner organizations. SENIA partnerships are formed with nonprofits and social enterprises whose mission aligns with our own and whose work strengthens inclusive education. In this conversation, we explore how creative, story-based learning can support belonging, student voice, and more inclusive communities for learners everywhere.

Lori Boll: This meeting is being recorded. Hello, Rachel, and welcome to Happy Hour.

Rachel: Thanks for having me, Lori. It’s a pleasure.

Lori Boll: Well, you and I first met. Well, when did we first meet? At AAIE?

Rachel: Yes, AAIE in Toronto in February, I believe.

Lori Boll: That’s right. Yes. But you’ve been in the international school circuit for a very long time.

Rachel: For a very long time now. I first entered the international school circuit in, gosh, 2002, I think. So it’s been a while.

Lori Boll: Yeah. And where are you located now?

Rachel: I’m currently right outside of D.C. in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Lori Boll: Okay. And most recently was Finland.

Rachel: Yes. I was at the International School of Helsinki for seven years, and we moved to Maryland just about a year and a half ago. So I’m just like our third culture kids. When people say, “Where are you right now?” I have to answer with about six different places that I consider local.

Lori Boll: I know, I know. So you were working at international schools. You’re no longer doing that, as I described in your introduction. You are now the Director of Education and Innovation at Big Bad Boo Studios, and we’re also here to talk about your new book. So let’s get going.

We know that many schools have a focus on social-emotional learning. The importance of it we all know, especially since Covid times, that SEL is even more essential. But what we also know is that not all SEL approaches are inclusive or feel inclusive for neurodivergent learners.

So in your mind, what does truly inclusive SEL look like?

Rachel: Truly inclusive SEL is doing two things. Number one, it is delivered in a way that is appealing, exciting, and sticky for our children who may be struggling with social relationships, maybe are struggling with self-management. They’re the learners who really need this material most. So I really think about the significance of delivering it to them in a way that fits their learning needs and is appealing and fun.

But then I think the other inclusivity part is it’s not just how we’re delivering, but it’s what we’re delivering. So if we’re thinking about culturally responsive teaching, it’s not just about saying self-management, SEL skills. It’s really also about this feeling of being able to build community and understand people’s different perspectives wherever they’re meeting us in a community.

So helping kids recognize that kids come to the group with different skills, different abilities, and the SEL should be helping kids recognize that not everybody is exactly what you think they are. And if we’re going to come to a community in our full self, then we need to be exploring things like different cultural backgrounds, different learning styles, and that should be part of the SEL. So as kids are learning about themselves, we’re also learning about other people and how to support them.

Lori Boll: Great. So it sounds like you really explore that intersectionality of individuals, humans.

Rachel: Absolutely. In fact, just yesterday I was reading an article that was published on the Harvard EASEL Lab site about best practice in SEL, and it was really saying that if it’s going to meet the needs of all learners, the SEL also needs to be helping kids understand this inclusivity piece and be inclusive of all their different ways of learning and being. So it’s not just, wouldn’t that be nice, but it’s essential to helping kids feel a sense of belonging in the classroom, feel committed to each other, understand each other, and develop the social skills they need.

Lori Boll: Yeah, definitely. And so now, as I said, you’re working with Big Bad Boo Studios, and your organization approaches SEL through storytelling and animation. So why are stories and characters such powerful tools for reaching these diverse learners, or all learners?

Rachel: All learners, really. I mean, when we look at how young people develop their value system and their understanding of how to relate to each other, it’s really through role modeling. It’s very difficult to didactically teach kids, “This is how you solve a problem,” or “This is how you should behave in a situation.” We’ve all tried that with our own children and we know how well it works.

But what they really do is, we know the brain is designed to understand things through story. And so story becomes this incredibly powerful tool for role modeling some of the best ways of interacting, some of the best ways of dealing with emotional regulation.

And when they’re cartoons, when they’re developed by, and we have the privilege of working with Big Bad Boo’s production studio that has Disney creatives and even curriculum writers from Sesame Street, the stories are delightful. They’re really fun and silly and joyful. So kids are giggling when they’re watching two genies come out of a bottle after 6,000 years, and they should be so excited they’re finally free. But we’ve got a lamp genie and a bottle genie, and they’re so focused on their beef from 6,000 years ago that they can’t even say, “Hey, we could create all this wonderful stuff together.” They bicker and they fight and they bring up old problems.

And so the kids watch them make all these mistakes that they naturally make in conflict themselves, or they’ve seen their parents make in conflict, and then they’re able to actually identify why aren’t these genies able to put aside the problems. And then the kids can actually start to come up with some norms for how we get along, why it’s important. And they’ve been role modeled to. They’ve had a chance to discuss it on their own. They’ve had a chance to reflect on how it relates to their own understanding of conflict. They can even talk about how sometimes we have problems with people that we make assumptions about.

So we’re bringing up really essential issues about getting along with others in society, but it’s silly, it’s fun, it’s a high production value. So I think storytelling is important because they can understand it, they can react to it, they can explore it, and then they can even write their own stories based on it. What about my conflict? How was that based on maybe something that happened in the past that I could reexamine?

Lori Boll: Well, you mentioned Sesame Street, and what I always appreciated about Sesame Street was there, as great as it was and cute as it was for kids, there were always some zingers in there for adults as well. So it kept adults captivated. And I’m just thinking about those genies. I think all of us adults, we have lessons to learn as well. So it sounds like it’s a great opportunity for adults as well.

Rachel: Well, and CASEL says that if we’re going to change how kids are understanding their relationships to each other, who they are, their self-regulation, we also have to be reaching out to families.

So one of the things I love that we do, and it was interesting, I was talking to an educator the other day at an international school in Germany, and when I explained this to her, her eyes kind of lit up, that all of our activities. The way that our curriculum works helps kids with any issue we’re talking about. So maybe we’re talking about fairness and should public property be open to everyone. Now, that’s a big concept. So we start off with a prompt and we’ll ask kids to say, if you wanted to plan a party on a roof, but there was someone in your group who was in a wheelchair, would that be fair? What would you do about it? How would that make them feel? Because oftentimes kids and adults forget to think about other people’s perspective and the barriers.

And so they start having that conversation and they begin to think about, oh, what are barriers that maybe I wouldn’t be aware of. And then there’s this beautiful episode. This is one of my favorite episodes. It’s about a young team, a basketball team, and their star player, Alberto, is in a wheelchair. And the city park has not been serviced, so their court has all these big potholes in it and Alberto is not able to play very well.

So there’s the main character, whose name is Judge Jody. She litigates cases in the neighborhood. And she has this case between Alberto and the city council because the city council has decided to put all the money toward squirrel feeders that was voted in. So it’s this real issue about what do we do with resources in the community. Is it fair to everyone? What if it was voted in?

And the kids get really passionate about this. And then they ultimately get to also decide the case themselves, and they act out a similar case at the end to get out of their seats.

But then also the material goes home so that the kids can start talking with their parents about how do we make society more fair for everyone. And what I really like about this is oftentimes families don’t recognize the complexity that kids are ready for. They’re ready to be dealing with complex issues about fairness, self-regulation, emotions. And what parents always talk about is how happy they are to have these grounded conversations that are based on the activities that go home.

So going back to that educator at the international school in Germany, she was like, this is what we need because we’ll always send these notes home to say maybe these are themes and topics for the week. But to actually give parents a link to the cartoon the kids watched, they can rewatch it with the children and do the activity. It’s really helping reinforce some of the same skills with the families that are happening in schools.

And we know that partnership is really powerful and really powerful for all of our learners, to be having similar language at home and school, similar values, similar ideas. But it’s hard to achieve that.

Lori Boll: Right. Wow. Okay, let’s talk about the history with Sesame Street and educational media traditions. How has that history shaped the way your programs are designed for classrooms?

Rachel: Well, we’re incredibly fortunate because for at least 15 years, we’ve been working with Dr. Shalom Fisch, who was the lead developmental psychologist at Sesame Street and also the head curriculum writer. So this really guides the way that we think about what kids pick up from a story.

And I’ll tell you what this looks like in practice because it’s one of my favorite parts of the job. When we’re writing a new cartoon that will also be matched and paired with curriculum and is really based on meeting learning goals, we look at our framework, which includes the CASEL competencies, which also includes mental health and well-being, and also citizenship goals. Because kids need to be able to apply goals like being an upstander, fostering belonging, even environmental goals.

We know that to really make some of these SEL goals permanent and resonant with kids, they have to feel a purpose, like they can apply them.

So we look at that framework, and then we sit down to write the cartoons. And it’s really fun because we’ll say, okay, so what would, let’s talk about perseverance, for instance. If we really want perseverance to come out in this cartoon, what’s a storyline that would make sense to a first grader? Where are they as far as perseverance? So what are some of the things that they need to learn to do? Well, tying your shoes is really hard. I mean, it becomes really very concrete.

And getting to work with someone who’s been doing this with Sesame Street and other media projects for decades, he’s so informed about where kids are in their developmental journey and what lesson they will take.

So if our writers from Disney start saying, okay, let’s make the kid get really upset because they can’t tie their shoe and they give up, he’ll also chime in and say, well, we want to be careful that the final lesson is hopeful. So even though that’s funny. So we’re very attuned to not only what the objective is for us, but how that will land with children and where they are in their developmental reasoning and how they can role model from what we’re showing.

So it’s all so intentional. But then the shows are just really fun to watch as well. So even, as you said, if you’re an adult, you can see the lesson coming out of it, but it also helps you remember when you were at that stage too, and some of those conflicts or struggles you’re facing.

Lori Boll: And what’s the age range of the videos that you create for students?

Rachel: So we’re currently in schools with programming that begins with kindergarten and goes through grade five.

Thinking about that developmental trajectory, our kindergarten and grade one program is called Lily and Lola. It’s adorable, and it’s based in a family. Because if we’re thinking about kids’ early development of social-emotional skills and relational skills, it happens with their parents, it happens with siblings. It’s when we’re first recognizing, oh, it’s not only about me. Other people have feelings too, and I need to regulate with those people or deal with disappointments that might come up with my parents and how do we come back together.

And then the next programs go into, it’s called 16 Hudson, and it’s based in a big city, in a big building with people from all over the world. And so kids get to see how those relationships develop outside the nuclear family into relationships with people who maybe come from different perspectives or different cultural backgrounds. And so woven into everything we’re doing in that grade one/two program, 16 Hudson, you have kids celebrating the Chinese New Year, Nowruz, the Persian New Year. But it’s not like it’s an episode about that. It’s an episode about all the things that would happen when you’re trying to live with other people who maybe have different perspectives.

And then we move into grade three. I mentioned Judge Jody before, but grade three really begins to be about how do we make rules not just for us, but that are fair for everyone. How do we live in a democratic society.

And then finally, grades four and five, we have a program called 1001 Nights. That’s where those bottle genies that I mentioned before come from. And that’s much more exploring big ethical questions about gratitude and leadership and how do we manage our preconceptions about other societies that maybe are different than ours. So really grappling with more moral complexity as they get older to meet their needs.

Lori Boll: Yeah. Oh, so fun. I want to watch them all. You often talk about shifting classroom culture from competition and individual achievement toward collaboration and community. So why is that shift so important for supporting learners?

Rachel: All learners. We think about what happens in the brain when we’re trying to learn. We first need to feel safe. And so in my many years of being in classrooms, those kids who are on the defensive, who feel like they need to hide part of themselves, those are not kids who can be thinking about anything else but self-protection. They’re not ready to learn.

And so building a classroom culture that feels safe, where people can make mistakes, where people feel supported from each other, is at the heart of preparing kids for an environment in which they can thrive.

What I like about Big Bad Boo is it gives kids a very safe and inviting opportunity to start sharing some of their perceptions about what does it feel like when I’m struggling to regulate myself, or when I’m feeling like I really want something and I can’t have it. Everything we’re doing is teeing up safe conversations about how kids feel about things, their perceptions, getting along with others.

And I think that children often make the mistake, and maybe all adults do, that they believe they’re the only one who feels that way. And so when you give them a structured opportunity to actually have a discussion, they feel so relieved that someone else also feels similar to how they feel.

There was a chapter in the World Happiness Report that I was reading this summer, and it was talking about the concerns that we have globally that kids are feeling more isolated, they have more anxiety. There were some researchers out of Stanford that wanted to look into why this is, what’s creating this sense of isolation. They asked all the participants in the study to rate their own interest in getting to know other people. Most of the college students said, other people don’t really want to get to know me. There’s not interest in getting to know me. And then they were supposed to rate their own interest in getting to know other people. And they said, well, I really want to get to know other people.

So to me, that says people need an invitation to get to know each other. We all have a need not to be isolated, to be heard, to get a chance to express ourselves. And we need to start building these capacities or even rebuilding them from a young age.

And that’s what I think is at the heart of our programming. We have all this data coming out about how effective it is, but I think that effectiveness is because it makes it safe for kids to have conversations and share. And then once they begin to do it, you do not cancel Big Bad Boo programming. That’s one thing we’ve learned. Teachers report that kids say no. If they forget to put it into the day they were supposed to do it, kids remind them because they’re eager to talk, they’re eager to explore, and they’re eager to see the fun characters who are modeling the behaviors that they aspire to.

Lori Boll: I’m curious how, with all of that success and growth, you may respond to people who say, I really just can’t, I don’t have the time to put this into my school day. Or families who might say, you really need to focus on math and reading and the core subjects. You don’t need to be teaching this. What is your response for that?

Rachel: Well, a couple of things. I think that as far as the time goes, one of the pleasures of what we offer is that we have a lot of very validated data about the change in children based on doing this work. And I think that sets us apart in a lot of respects because we’ve been working with ministries of education and UNICEF and USAID for years now. And so if you’re doing an implementation in a post-conflict setting, you need to show impact. You need to have a third-party research firm validating your impact.

So we’ve worked with developmental psychologists and even Oxford data scientists to develop instruments that can measure what we’re doing. And I think that’s really important.

The way that we’re measuring isn’t oftentimes just self-report well-being surveys, like, do you feel a sense of belonging, is there a teacher that you connect with. Those give some information, but we’re doing this on a much more granular level where we’re actually using scenarios and, going back to stories, we put kids into a little vignette.

If you weren’t at school tomorrow, how do you think other kids would respond? Would they feel happy that you weren’t there? Would they miss you? Would they make you a card? Or would they notice? And then we even ask, in terms of showing their awareness of other perspectives, if you ran into a child from school at the grocery store tomorrow and they don’t make eye contact or notice you, is that because they don’t like you? Maybe something else is going on with them. Maybe they’re shy.

So this beginning to see how the competencies of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, how you feel about yourself at school, because we have this story-based perspective, we can do that also with our instruments.

And going back to what you’re saying about is this important in the classroom and do we have time, I think having that data, really concrete data, coming out to see where kids’ skills are, ultimately we hope to aggregate that data to academic outcomes to say, and we know through large studies, that the more well-being, the more social awareness, the more grounded in themselves and self-management a child is, then they tend to do better academically.

But we’re looking to really be able to put that into a school with the children they’re working with. Because I think oftentimes, unfortunately, the data coming out in schools is data about academic success alone. And it can cause people to say there’s not time for this other stuff because we need to be focusing on these test scores.

The other way that I would answer that question, as far as the time goes, is if your classroom is really engaged in supporting each other, going back to what I said about safety, work and taking risks and pushing yourselves to learn just happens so much more easily.

And we also know that our children come to us in all different places. One child maybe had a really stressful morning, got up late. Another kid maybe is so excited about a birthday that day. They’re all coming from different environments.

And so if we’re going to build community in a class, we have to get everybody in the same place. So best practice is always having a morning meeting. The same at the end of the day, before we send kids off to their diverse environments, we have to close the mindset.

And so what we found is that people who are using Big Bad Boo programming really well are weaving it throughout the week. So we talked about having kind of an introduction to a topic that can happen on a Monday, and kids are reflecting, and then they can watch the video on a Tuesday. And then on a Wednesday in a morning meeting or an afternoon session, they can be doing the activity.

And in fact, this allows it to be even more alive in the classroom. Some of the topics we’re talking about, because you’re reflecting on it day to day, and then you can even bring it up as part of the discourse. A conflict comes up at recess, is that how the characters would have responded? We talked about that this morning.

So recursivity is the power of creating a common language in the classroom.

Lori Boll: You know, at SENIA, we often say that changing mindset starts with facts, data, and facts, and changing hearts starts with stories. And so I’m curious if, since your organization, your programs have reached millions of children around the world, are there any stories or moments from classrooms that really capture that impact?

Rachel: Absolutely. There’s a beautiful story about a girl in a classroom who was really feeling left out. She was from a minority background, and there were other kids who just weren’t playing with her very regularly. And they started using the 1001 Nights curriculum. And those girls who were in a clique of the majority culture started to recognize, hey, that other girl looks kind of lonely, and maybe we should go up to her and include her.

And they tried. And the girl who was feeling excluded said, I don’t really want to play with you. She had been hurt from what happened before. And the girls in the group went up and talked to the teacher, and the teacher helped them relate it back to what some of the characters had felt and open up a discussion.

And so then they came back to the girl who they wanted to play with, and they said, you know what, we’re sorry. We were hearing a little bit about how you’re feeling. And she gave them a chance, and then they became fast friends by the end of the year. So that was among the many stories we hear reported from teachers.

We also hear often from teachers that kids start to think about different ways of solving conflict and how fun that is to watch them say, you know what, we can have a conversation, or they’ll start using the language like, hey, that’s not empathy. So it’s really great to watch them internalize and reference the characters.

One of my favorite stories is in the Philippines. We’re really working to change the perception of gender in this area of the Philippines called the Bangsamoro. And so the lead character in the series that we’re working with is a female, and she’s really wise and courageous. And we heard that there was a regional festival where kids dressed up, and so many of the girls dressed up as this character. So they’re internalizing this sense of, I am powerful, I am courageous, I am Maya. And I just love that because kids do want to find the right role models. We just need to make sure they’re seeing them.

Lori Boll: Yeah. Well, many educators worry that inclusion requires complicated interventions or extra resources. What are some simple practices teachers can start using to create more supportive and inclusive classroom cultures?

Rachel: Number one, I think being a little bit transparent when you’re presenting material. Even everything that we put together in Big Bad Boo is very intentionally written up for the kids. It gives them a little time to think. It’s in big font that is clear.

But in my classroom practice, I would always be very open and say, look, I made sure I made this font big and clear because people absorb information in different ways. But is it working for everyone? And you can tell me, either raise your hand and let me know, or even write me, send me some information, or I’m going to go around and talk to everybody.

So I think primarily making it transparent that we should never make the assumption that everyone’s coming from the same place, and finding many different ways to give feedback so that we’re not relying on the most vulnerable learners to come up and tell us this isn’t working for us.

We’re checking constantly. Did that work for everyone? Well, why didn’t we understand it? And even modeling it as the teacher to say, I’m sorry, I presented that information in a way that didn’t really make sense.

So it becomes normalized to say that there are many ways of learning with a different perspective. And let’s make that safe so that we can find the best strategies that also might change from day to day, so we have an opportunity to open that conversation.

Lori Boll: That’s great advice. Thank you. Well, exciting news. You have a book coming out, so please share. Tell us what’s happening there.

Rachel: Well, that is very exciting to me. I’m a first-time author, so it feels a little surreal. It comes out on May 6, so right about the time I think this podcast will be published.

It’s called Let the Learners Lead: Empowering Student Voice to Co-Create School Culture. It’s really more working with adolescents, but the same idea that if we think about school culture as being so essential to kids feeling safe, feeling like they have agency, then we need to help kids be part of creating it.

And oftentimes there are a lot of barriers in student leadership in schools, very hidden barriers that maybe prevent some kids from feeling like they can be a leader. Things like requirements for academic success or leaders being defined as kids who want to stand up in public and speak in front of a group.

In fact, just this weekend I was talking to a group of educators and one of them said, you know what, it just occurred to me that the only kids we ever have present at assembly, this was a first-grade teacher, are the kids who can already read with fluency. And why is that a prerequisite of standing up in assembly? And what kind of a message am I sending to the other kids?

So what the book is really about is how it’s essential that all kids are feeling responsibility for the school culture. Because at the end of the day, there are many more of them than there are teachers. And so we have to work together, teachers and students, to think about how culture influences us.

It also engages young people in the democratic responsibility of taking care of other people, taking care of the environment for everyone. And so there are a lot of tools in the book for teachers and kids working together to say, what can we change? What can we change now? How do we do it? And how do we do it as a team? How are we all responsible? How can we use different skills? Because we all come with a different set of skills that will be really useful.

And I really focus on some kids who had never had leadership opportunities before. I tell stories of educators or my own experience tapping those kids on the shoulder to say, hey, English might not be your first language, but you have a lot to tell me about what it feels like to be an English language learner in our community. And then how that kid transforms as a result of feeling like they have other kids to stand up for and to make school better for.

Lori Boll: Wow. Well, it sounds like a must-have. So how can people get it?

Rachel: Amazon probably is the best place. Also the Routledge website. I also have a website that goes with my book materials, which is called cocreateschools.com. So it’s available on that website as well.

Lori Boll: All right, we’ll put that on our resource list for the show notes.

And lastly, you’ve described the videos so well. As a social enterprise, how do you ensure that your organization or your videos are shared with people?

Rachel: Well, we aren’t a nonprofit, though we work in partnership. We’ve worked in partnership with UNICEF and USAID and we’ve done a lot of aid work. As I mentioned, we’ve worked with over 3 million children across ministries of education.

So some of the accessibility has been through partnering with even Islamic Relief Fund to make sure that we’re getting the funding and support to reach kids who really need our materials. And we’re working with schools to try to make it as accessible as possible.

One of our mantras is unfortunately we have to keep the lights on, but if someone really needs us, we can’t say no. Because part of our ethos has always been making sure that every child is seeing themselves represented in media and feels empowered by what they’re seeing. And so if we can get it to more kids, we’re going to try our hardest to do what we can to get it to more kids.

Lori Boll: Super. Thanks. And sorry I misspoke. Not a nonprofit, but you are a social enterprise.

Rachel: Yes, we are a social enterprise.

Lori Boll: Yes. Okay, well, I think that’s all we have time for today. Thanks so much, Rachel, for spending this happy hour with us.

Rachel: Well, I am grateful to be part of the SENIA family. As a parent of a child who learns differently, your resources have been really important to me and to supporting other educators in our ecosystem. So it’s a great honor to be joining you today.

Lori Boll: Thanks.