Edtech Insiders
Edtech Insiders
Building Belonging Through Games: Social Cipher’s Mission for Neurodivergent Youth with Lucy Stevens and Vanessa Castañeda Gill
Vanessa Castañeda Gill, CEO and Co-Founder of Social Cipher and Lucy Stevens, Co-Founder and Creative Director of Social Cipher, lead a majority-neurodivergent team creating social-emotional learning video games that help neurodivergent youth build self-understanding and connections; inspired by Vanessa’s experiences as an autistic/ADHD Latina, their games and curriculum are now used in 200+ schools and therapy centers across 8 countries, earning recognition from Forbes 30 Under 30, MIT Solve, and the LEGO Foundation.
💡 5 Things You’ll Learn in This Episode
- Using games to build belonging and self-advocacy for neurodivergent students
- Authentic representation and storytelling in SEL game design
- Insights teachers and therapists gain from playtesting
- The impact of a majority-neurodivergent team on product and mission
- Connecting SEL games to IEP goals and today’s mental health needs
✨ Episode Highlights
[00:03:08] Vanessa on founding Social Cipher from her autistic & ADHD experience
[00:06:05] Lucy on designing nuanced neurodivergent characters
[00:12:37] Feedback from students and educators that changed the game
[00:18:21] Lessons from managing a majority-neurodivergent team
[00:26:25] Pairing the game with SEL curriculum in schools
[00:33:52] Why schools adopt games to solve urgent SEL challenges
[00:41:55] Tackling youth anxiety through meaning and belonging
[00:47:15] How Social Cipher views AI in education and gaming
[00:48:50] Using SEL games to support IEP goals
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[00:00:00] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: We have students that are in an inclusive classroom where they're completely siloed based on maybe their disability and they're not speaking to each other and they're feeling isolated. Right? Or we have, you know, a giant special education teacher shortage, and we have teachers that are not prepared or equipped to work with Neurodivergence.
Students, thus making it harder and harder for these neurodivergent students to climb out of this hole of low self-esteem or a feeling behind and not getting the sports they need. Those are the value propositions that you have to meet and being a game. Is a great medium for that.
[00:00:40] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to EdTech Insiders, the top podcast covering the education technology industry from funding rounds to impact to AI developments across early childhood K 12 higher ed and work. You'll find it all here at EdTech Insiders. Remember to subscribe to the pod, check out our newsletter, and also our event calendar, and to go deeper, check out EdTech inside.
Where you can get premium content, access to our WhatsApp channel, early access to events and back channel insights from Alex and Ben. Hope you enjoyed today's pod.
We have an awesome episode of EdTech Insiders. Today we have two co-founders of an incredibly important and really impactful company. It's called Social Cipher. So we have Lucy Stevens. She's the co-founder and creative director of Social Cipher. It's a company that makes social emotional learning video games for neurodivergent youth and the professionals who work with them.
In this position, Lucy has led the Social Cipher team on a mission to help. Neurodivergent youth better understand themselves and connect with those around them. She's deeply involved in synthesizing and guiding the talented work of Social Ciphers neurodiverse development team, as well as overseeing high level company direction.
We also have Vanessa Castaneda Gill, the CEO, and Co-founder of Social Cipher. Based on her own experiences as an autistic slash A DH ADHD individual, Vanessa formed a 50% neurodivergent team to create a product that helps neurodivergent youth advocate for themselves and embrace who they are. Trusted by Over 200 schools and therapy centers in eight countries.
Social Ciphers games are evidence-based by university led studies to improve skills like self-regulation and sense of belonging. Social Ciphers innovative games have earned them recognition as Forbes 30 under 30 in education as MIT Solvers, and most recently by the Lego Foundation Play for all long-term partners.
Lucy Stevens and Vanessa Castaneda Gill. Welcome to EdTech Insiders.
[00:02:50] Lucy Stevens: Thank you so much for having us. Yeah, it's great to be here.
[00:02:53] Alex Sarlin: I've really been looking forward to this conversation. Vanessa, let's start with you. Tell us about the story behind Social Cipher and how you decided to use games as an approach to support social emotional learning and neurodivergence.
[00:03:08] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: Absolutely. So I started this product and this venture based on my own experiences. I was diagnosed with autism and ADHD when I was 14. And long story short, there was not representation, there was not support in school, and there were a lot of st stigmas and stereotypes that existed about being autistic, especially as a woman and especially as a Latina.
And so.
Something that told me that there wasn't anything wrong with me. Right. And and so because there was nothing there, I was very much in this space of, all right, well I can't connect with other people like quote unquote normal people do. I'm told that I'm never gonna be able to do that, so I might as well not try.
So I really just tried to kind of squeeze myself into this box of like, I will only do well in academics because that's all I can do and I'm just gonna use that and just. I put my head in the books and that's all I'll do. And of course, that created a lot of mental health issues and just a lot of challenges growing up.
I hid my diagnosis for over six years until I was almost 21 years old. And during that time, I actually became a published neuroscience researcher originally in an effort to fix my own brain, but. What I started finding out by doing this research later on was that number one, I was passionate about it and I could help people, and number two, I had found people that I could connect with contrary to what I believed before.
So all of this kind of came together to make me realize that I. Had some way that I could bring my personal and professional experience to help other young people kind of with these same issues and lack of sport that I had, and I could use the things that I loved and eventually found representation in like music and movies and games to do that.
So that was kind of the natural medium of doing it because I had learned so much through stories and through being able to. Be a main character and have my own agency in that way. So that's really how it began. And we're now, actually, now we are a majority neurodivergent team. And I think that shapes everything I we do with our empathy and just being able to create nuanced characters and stories from all of that.
[00:05:24] Alex Sarlin: It's amazing. It's a great story and games and meeting young people where they are with in media, that that really excite them and engage them is a great strategy for any type of tool. But I think it's particularly useful in this particular type of population because you're talking, as you say, a population that might feel stigmatized, might feel.
Other might feel just that they're not fitting in. And the idea of being able to connect in a way that feels so natural, it feels like what everybody is doing, playing games can be really meaningful. Um, Lucy, you're the creative director. I'd love to hear you talk about how your team approaches character development and storytelling in these games in a way that resonates with neurodivergent players like those that Vanessa just described, including herself.
[00:06:05] Lucy Stevens: Yeah, I really love this question. So Vanessa actually set me up well for it, just in terms of we are a majority neurodivergent team at this point, and so when we're trying to design these characters, it really is a collaborative process. We have a pretty. Small, but like close-knit team where, I mean, we're trying to get a lot of eyes on what we're designing and also make sure that folks, as much as possible, aren't the only person in the room who's able to maybe provide notes on something.
So we get to have multiple different perspectives or multiple different lived experiences that are layering to, you know, then make something that's a little more realistic or, you know, informed from more than just one person's experience. And we also, yeah, just really. Carefully design how the neurodivergent shows up.
So for folks who are maybe familiar with character documentation or design their own characters for different media, we have pages of notes that are just about how a character's neurodivergence exhibits, right? So this shows up in terms of, say, helping our writer figure out Ava's in a stressful new situation.
How is she going to respond to that or. What are Ava's special interests or what are the beyond just things that make her uncomfortable? What are the sensory experiences that really upset her and are really difficult for her? So we have to keep track of that for a lot of our characters, because many of our characters actually are neurodivergent, no, not just autistic, which I'll actually talk about in a second of.
We have some characters with a DHD, and like I said, others with autism. And I, I think that that's another piece of what we're trying to do is help show people interactions and friendships and relationships that maybe they haven't gotten to see before. One that comes to mind is in our main crew, we actually, so Ava, our main character of our games is autistic, but then we also have another crew member who's autistic, but selectively speaking.
And so we've heard that that interaction between Lyor, his name is character, and Ava is something that folks have never. Seen before, you know, so we try to include opportunities like that. And then also in terms of designing games of characters, the last thing, or stories and characters. Last thing I'll say is neurodivergent audience.
Like you were just saying, Alex is. The same as any other audience. You know, they want stuff that is good and fun and engaging and rich. And so we interview all of our play testers about what games they actually play. And you know, you're hearing Minecraft, Roblox five times at Freddy's type things. You know, that just you have to respect the neurodivergent audience as you would any other audience with designing meaningful deep characters.
[00:08:31] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. It's such an interesting point to have these sort of character development, character backs stories, but that they're enhanced to talk about how each character's neurodivergence exhibits. And so, Vanessa, I wanna pass it back to you when I, and ask a little bit about that.
Because you know, when you, you were mentioning how, when you were growing up, you felt. A little isolated. You were saying, Hey, you, you hid your diagnosis. You weren't sure if it was gonna keep you from making friends. This is a very common experience for many, many people across the spectrum. Been the spectrum in both ways, across the autism spectrum and across the spectrum of, of young people.
But when you're developing these games, it's meant to be really a big tent, right? It's like how can people see themselves in the characters? How can they recognize, challenge their own assumptions that may be holding them back? I'm curious about how your experience growing up, but also your experience working with this now, this large population of neurodivergent users and non neurodivergent users has shaped your thinking about how to build the games.
How do you create a experience that has is as big a 10 as possible that mirrors some of the, you know, roblox e types of, uh, popular experiences, but in which neurodivergent people can see themselves?
[00:09:37] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: Yeah, definitely. So I mean, I, I will say I had a very rocky journey with my understanding of my neurodivergence, as you know, most young people do.
Yeah. And honestly, when I was starting out with all this. Even though I was telling people about my diagnosis, it wasn't because I was confident in it yet, it was because I knew to move forward and to talk about social safer. The next question was gonna be, why did you start this? And that was gonna, you know, that had to be part of the answer.
And so I think for a while, for probably the first couple years, right, like this. A lot of it was still in this mentality of fixing, of trying to get neurodivergent youth playing the game to conform, to neurotypical society, to hide things. So they didn't have to feel the pain that I had felt right. And I thought that was really the answer.
And in the beginning, prototypes, right? Like I think it's important to say we are so. Inclusive neurodiversity affirming have so much thought and nuance in our games now, but man, before, like it was trying to force kids to kind of get through sensory overwhelming situations by masking, right? Or it was direct simulations of like.
This is sadness, this is happiness, and just such surface level emotional detection rather than the way it actually happens, which is a lot of these emotions come at you woven into your life at once. So for me, actually, I think, yeah, what the biggest change was was working with our play testers. So the game is.
Named after an actual young girl named Ava, who's much older now, which is wild. But when she was our first play tester, I looked at her and I was like, man, she's so bright and wonderful and just so full of potential. I don't want her to ever think about having to fix herself in any way. So why is the game going this way?
And so that's really when I, I, I started to change things and especially as we've, you know, worked with more neurodivergent youth. Of various neuro types and with our team, I'm realizing, you know, there are so many different ways that we should be depicting neurodivergence. There's of course, we're on a monolith, and along with that, like it's not about fixing, it is not about suppressing or changing behavior to conform.
It's about really embracing a student's strengths and who they are, and then being able to. Use those strengths to go in and and tackle the things they need to improve on and build confidence. That's the biggest way it's changed and I owe that all to the other neurodivergent people I've had the honor to work with.
[00:12:12] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, so you both mentioned the sort of power of play testing here that, you know, you learn about because you're, you're building games, you learn about the games from seeing players try them out and prototype them and, and, and work with them. Lucy, I'm curious, you know, what has been the most surprising or meaningful feedback you've received from a player or, or from an educator about the games and the, the sort of impact of the game on your players?
[00:12:37] Lucy Stevens: Yeah, so great question. Yeah, a couple things come to mind. One piece of feedback actually that we got from a play tester who was an eighth grader who was in a class of kids that we had tests that still actually sits with me and I think Vanessa knows what I'm talking about too. 'cause it really touched the whole team, was the kid just left a note.
Like, this is a great game. It's so hard to make games for people that are not. You or yourself, never give up. I was like that. That was like, I wanna print this out, put it on my wall, and every time, you know, we're grinding through trying to get a product out or you know, working on a new strategy and it's hard.
You gotta just look at the sign. I do think about that a lot actually. But you know, we've seen a lot of really. Interesting and cool ways that the players do attach to the characters, especially for young girls. Ava has been a big rallying point. Vanessa's touched up a little bit on how this, this deep lack of representation, and I wanna name that specifically.
That's also, uh, you know, lack of representation for neurodivergent women that's out there in media. And so. We've had, uh, there was one girl who was playing, uh, in the New York public school system who actually replaced Ava's name with her own as she played through, you know, she was like, I am Ava, and this is like that connected, super strong.
Wow. But like, to be clear, also, we've had male players really love playing the games too. That's a question we get a lot actually is like, du Bois still relate and they do. We've had some really cool stories there of, of people relating to Ava being like, oh, this. This shutdown sequence, this animation, I'm seeing, you know, that's me.
I totally understand that. The one story that I do like to highlight on the sort of interesting sort of feedback we got was in our trust module. This is a module all about building trust with others and how to identify who might be untrustworthy. We do have an untrustworthy character, his name is Zeke, and the games take plays in a space park universe.
So he's kind of a hotshot space pilot, basically is his character. And as you play the game, Z tends to forget things about Ava or make Ava, you know, go run errands for him and do these sorts of things, and generally exhibit untrustworthy behavior. But, so in the case of this young girl, she's a middle school girl, uh, a DH adhd, who was playing Ava with her counselor, and the counselor was watching as over and over again, her player, her client kept trusting Zeke and doing whatever Zeke asked.
Ava to do and following along, and we give the player many opportunities to say, Hey, I don't think you're a fit for this crew. I'm trying to put together, I'm gonna move on. But she kept working with him and, and when the therapist asked about it, the player said, oh, I felt bad for him. I, you know, I wanted to help him.
It seemed like he was in real trouble. And so, you know, as we know, neurodivergent, women and girls are especially susceptible actually to falling into untrustworthy relationships or trusting folks. That don't necessarily deserve it. And so this turned into, you know, a significant conversation between the counselor and the parents to be like, Hey, you know, this is, this is an issue we're seeing here.
And so I really like to highlight that as you know, the impact of designing a complex and engaging character that, you know, again, maybe had some untrustworthy qualities.
[00:15:49] Alex Sarlin: It's fascinating and, and I think, you know, the, the power of a story to bring up these types of incredibly important real life issues that then that be discussed within a counseling environment is exactly the kind of power that Social Cipher brings.
You've both mentioned a couple of times the power of having a team that is 50% plus neurodivergent, and I'd like to ask both of you about. What that's like, first of all, how, how you do it, because I think that's really an interesting, that's a noble and really, really interesting way to put together a team.
And I'm curious the logistics of how you do that, but also what are the, some of, what are the benefits? I'm sure there's so many, but let me start with you.
[00:16:25] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: Definitely. So I think yes, there is work that you have to put into, just like any diverse team, right? There's or any team at all, right? There's work that you have to put into in order to make sure folks feel included and supported to do their best work.
So. I think that for working with Neurodivergent folks, myself included, I have to manage myself a whole lot. It's a lot about prioritizing and making sure everyone knows the why behind what you're doing, what their little piece or thing they're contributing is playing. Kind of what role that. Little piece, they're contribu is playing in the big picture, and that's gonna just create a lot more motivation, help give them clarity.
I think Lucy will touch on documenting changes and documenting everything there. And I think also, like for me, I, I have an actual equation for doing priorities because I know my brain cannot naturally prioritize things. So I need an objective equation to do that. And I actually make. Priority list for the folks that are neurodivergent that I manage.
And I think, yeah, the big pro is of course that really truth and nuance and, and true representation that happens in the product. But I think also on the, on the sales and marketing side, right? It's like we build, we have a giant free resource library of social emotional learning tips and blogs about inclusive classrooms and also actual SEL activities that are free on our site.
Those resources actually useful because they're coming from neurodivergent minds. Right. And I think on the sales side, shout out to Suzanne, who's our school partnership director, right? She's also neurodivergent. And so that empathy, not only as a former teacher, but as a former teacher who is Neurodivergent, she's really able to relate to folks and just connect to other teachers and kinda amplify sort of the voices of the neurodivergent students they serve.
So I think that's just a huge plus.
[00:18:21] Alex Sarlin: That's amazing. Yeah. Lucy, same question. I'm curious how that's worked for you.
[00:18:25] Lucy Stevens: Yeah, I would just, plus one on, on everything Vanessa said. I think that a lot of it is about really getting into like how do you work best explicitly, super explicitly. Like what do you need to work best and okay, how can we like meet in the middle on that maybe.
We're not entirely able to do things in a certain way, but like we wanna meet in the middle. You know? I think that also it's building trust. You know, I think that on a team, as soon as you get outside a team of one, you know, as soon as there's two or three people, there is an amount of like handoff that's happening, right?
Where like, okay, you have to trust me to take this on, finish this, I'll give it back to you. And so. We've had a lot of stuff of figuring out, hey, this person's a team member's brain is really great at detail, and they get stressed out at like a really big picture sort of version of this. So how, you know, how are we presenting this information to different team members to make sure that we're.
Kind of like, okay, so we're past that like big uncertain ideation phase and now we're coming to you with the details, which is where like you really excel and we want your feedback there. So there's a lot of figuring out the handoff. 'cause we have other team members that I think really excel more at that blue sky big on certain thinking, right?
So, so it's really getting super explicit and identifying how everyone's brains work best. I think it's being flexible. I think it's. You know, being willing to adjust and think outside the box. A little, one example that I'll pull that has been a recent success is one team member who I was doing one-on-one check-ins with that, that I managed that was struggling to sort of hit deadlines with having a single 30 minute check-in every week where like, it's okay, it's been a week.
We're gonna like, you know, see how you're doing on all your deliverables. Okay. So some stuff slipped through the cracks. We actually switched, I have another friend who doesn't work at the company who has a DH adhd, and she's like, oh, oh, you should switch to two 15 minute standups a week that are super short.
But that's like keeping accountability, that's updating quickly. And that's been amazing. That's actually like really, really helped change, you know, getting deliverables done. And it was just a matter of not being rigid as a manager of like, well, this is the way we do things. We have to have one. 30 minutes stand of a week because that's what I do with everyone else I manage.
It was like, okay, what do you need? And so it is work. I think like as Vanessa said, you know, it is work and I think anyone who says it's easy is, you know, I would argue maybe not getting true outcomes or authentic connection. But yeah, again, I think that what it gives us as a company is that edge of having authentic lived experience.
It helps inform what we're doing, and I feel like that is one of the biggest value adds that we can have as a company. And so that's what this work at, trying to make an inclusive, neurodiverse friendly work environment. That's what that gives us.
[00:21:15] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, it's, uh, both amazing answers and you know, if talking to both of you, you can just feel how deeply thoughtful you both are about individual differences, basically.
Right. About how different people based on how their work style works. You, you mentioned sort of being very explicit about people's strengths and being very explicit about their needs. I mean, it's something that I think would be valuable in any team and it's especially valuable when you'd have complimentary and very different.
Types of, of minds and very different types of neurodivergent perspectives. It's really inspiring, frankly. I wanted to talk, you know, you mentioned early on, Lucy, that Ava is part of the, the social side of product. You also do a whole curriculum and you know, one thing that I think is a, let's just put on the table, 'cause I think it's, it may or may not be clear to to listeners, is that Social Cipher, the game is incredibly sophisticated looking.
It looks like it absolutely looks like. Really, really top tier game. It's beautiful. And it also is designed with Neurodivergence at its center, but it's not only for neurodivergent learners, it incorporates social emotional learning in much, in, in very broad ways that can be used in many different types of classrooms.
So Vanessa, I'd love to hear you talk about that and how you create, you know, why you felt like it was important to do a curriculum alongside the game and how it addresses both neurodivergent and non neurodivergent learners.
[00:22:28] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: Absolutely. So to kind of frame the game, I'm gonna use a description that you, Lucy always uses, which is explaining the game as like a book you read in English class, right?
Like it is something that you're using as a source and a reference that gives students a shared experience and an understanding. Of a social emotional concept, not in isolation, but in a story that they can relate to themselves. Right? So it's something where they have this shared experience, where they have the agency to control the interactions and the dialogue in this experience and in this story.
But you can't do that alone because the application to students' own lives, that comes with the curriculum and with the human element of a teacher drawing that out because that is what teachers do, right? Yeah. They draw those learning so. I can give a quick example. So with our second module, which is all about trying new things and coping with change in that Ava is on this new planet, everything's constantly changing and all, all she wants to do is find a library with a very special book and just this world is not letting her get there.
So she ends up kind of. Talking to her friend, ramen bot about all these different types of ways that she can, you know, cope with things and she explores those. And we, even in the game itself, right, we're kind of modeling what Lucy was just talking about, of trying out different ways. Meet underlying needs, right?
Mm-hmm. And that is what teachers are doing in the classroom to help students all the time to have sort of a proactive approach to preventing behavior incidents or issues with self-regulation. And so the student kind of has this agency to try out these different methods, see what works for ava, also see what works for them.
And what the curriculum does, for example, is we have this thing called a stress and strategy worksheet. And so using that stress and strategy worksheet, first of all, the students are gonna name. Alright, what seemed to be Ava's stressors and the things that made Ava feel uncomfortable and also what were the coping mechanisms that you and Ava explored?
And then, you know, that next step, which is the crucial one, is, alright, we figured out Ava's, now that you know those, what are yours? Like, what are those kind of things. And as one of our teachers, Megan, who's a spec, fantastic special education teacher, what she was saying was like, this really gives them that shared experience to.
Understand self-regulation on their own terms, identify their emotions, identify when they're starting to get stressed so that they can really reduce that, that probability that they're going to have, you know, a shutdown or meltdown or, or something difficult to deal with in class. And for Megan at least, you know, we saw that actually with some of her students who were having pretty.
Rough behavior incidents weekly that sometimes required classroom evacuation, that with these self-regulation skills that they were learning in Ava and with the curriculum, drawing it out and really into their own lives, those went down from weekly to less than monthly. And so it's that kind of stuff where games alone are so powerful in getting that message to students, but for it to stick and resonate and be transformational, that curriculum and that human element needs to be there.
[00:25:41] Alex Sarlin: Fantastic. I love that metaphor of how, you know, you have a shared experience in the game and people are seeing Ava deal with her being out of her comfort zone, not being able to find the library. And then it creates this launchpad for discussions for every individual student or groups or any, any combination to start to think about what is your comfort zone?
What do you do when you have to cope? What do you have to do when you have stressors? And I think it's a fantastic example, Lucy, lemme pass it to you because I wanna understand that how. Then what are the sort of wrappers around the game? You have a curriculum that can be used by special education teachers, it can be used by gen ed teachers, it can be used by specialists or therapists.
Tell us what that actually looks like. So what is the sort of translation layer that actually brings the curriculum to life inside a school environment?
[00:26:25] Lucy Stevens: Yeah, that's a great question. I think Vanessa already did a great job of giving a flavor of what the curriculum itself actually looks like, and so we have actually separate curriculums for therapists and counselors versus for educators, just 'cause I think the, the needs and requirements and goals of those professions are pretty different, but.
Oftentimes, you know, what we're seeing for use case is new small group sessions or breakout groups or things like that in schools. Sometimes advisory periods or or things like that. But also, again, we have like how we've had full classroom, we've also had more sort of one-on-one sessions maybe with.
Someone who's like a pushin specialist or things like that. And so what you realize is, I think anyone working in education, everything is so variable. There are very few scenarios where it's like, oh yes, in special ed, you know, even from school to school in a district. Yep. Right? People are are using a product in the same way, and so we really want to design a curriculum.
Again, Vanessa's talked a little bit about the internal structure, but just that. The way we present it to the professionals is sort of like, Hey, here are the key Castle competencies that each of these lessons within a module relate to. Again, just to shout out the Castle framework, that's the framework that we align.
I'm sure you're familiar with it, Alex. It is pretty well known. So, you know, we try to make it something where our lessons and our content can be used sort of before, during, or after play sessions. Sometimes, you know, folks have used this as a early finisher activity, uh, you know, or parts of the game, like say maybe they'll, and Vanessa you, I think, know about this really intimately, but some folks will play through an actual unit for the class period, you know, do sort of SEL ps and then we have World Builder, which is sort of like a 2D version of Minecraft in Ava's world that we've built.
Wow. It's like a crafting module and they get to do that as like a early finisher activity. So really like what we've come to understand is that these special education teachers, or even gen ed teachers, all teachers are brilliant at kind of customizing and building and, and drawing out what they want from curriculum and using that.
And I, I think that, you know, one thing to keep in mind as well too is that for special education typically. Say if you have a SEL program for like gen ed for a whole middle school, it's like, okay, great. We're tracking. In sixth grade you're learning about identity or like learning about yourself. And then in, in seventh grade, we're starting to learn about bullying.
And then eighth grade we're starting to learn about relationships, just for example. Mm-hmm. Say it's kind of tracking pretty specifically to different skills. So for neurodivergent learners, they might be at totally different sort of need points. They're like, okay, well actually, like my kid is really struggling with negotiating needs.
Like we need to do that first before we even get to who they are. So in special education teachers have to be quite responsive to that. So we want to make, again, like the way we designed the game is, is sort of like a Netflix library of these different social emotional learning competencies where. A professional is able to, to kind of choose and decide, okay, this is what I need to work on with my student or client.
So that's like really how we try to make it, you know? And of course the curriculum goes with that. That's how we try to make it really adaptable and flexible to what our users actually need.
[00:29:20] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. Great description. Let's actually put a fine point on a couple things you said though, just for the listeners who may, may or not, may not be aware.
So tell us about the Castle framework. This is the social emotional C-A-S-E-L. I forget exactly what it stands for, but it's sort of an organization that has created a. Social emotional learning framework. Tell us a little bit about that just so we are all on the same page our with our listeners.
[00:29:39] Lucy Stevens: Yeah, absolutely.
I think that's a great point. Yeah, so the Castle Framework is basically just a framework for understanding the different domains of social emotional learning. There are five core areas that everything falls into, which are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness. Relationship skills and responsible decision making.
Mm-hmm. So basically everything that a kid is working on or learning will fall into those five domains. And so the way that we talk about like our content is, we'll say like, this unit or this game, you know, is gonna bring up examples of responsible decision making. I do think sort of what Vanessa was talking about though, is.
The way we present the material is where these skills are sort of incorporated all in with each other, right? Where it's not like, okay, we have our responsible decision making unit, which I suppose you could do, and I, you know, I think would help folks. But in reality, our responsible decision making is also, you know, gonna be in play at the same time as as self-regulation and things like that.
So we often have multiple cast competencies in each thing we build.
[00:30:39] Alex Sarlin: It's a really interesting framework and I think it's a powerful one. I learned a lot from just your description of it as well, so I appreciate that. You know, I, I knew about it in theory, but I don't know the, the domains actually, but it feels incredibly important at this moment in particular where everybody is trying to figure out social emotional learning and wellness in school.
Yes. I wanted to ask about the gaming approach one more time. 'cause I think this is something, there was a time I came up in my history through the gaming education world. That was what I, I did my master's thesis on. It's something I've always really loved. I love the overlap between gaming and education.
I believe, Vanessa, you were just at the Serious Games Conference, is that right? Games for Change. You've done,
[00:31:12] Lucy Stevens: Luis, have went to Games for Change.
[00:31:13] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. Gotcha. Yes. This is such an interesting world and I I, what I wanted to ask you about is when you decided to do this in a game format, there was a time in which doing something in a game format would be a risky decision.
It would be like, well, schools don't really know how to handle games. They don't know when to do them. They don't know exactly how it works. You have to sort of convince them that games belong in school, and my feeling is that those times may be starting to be over. I think schools are starting to recognize the power of gaming and education in a big way, and they almost.
Embrace it, but I'm curious if that experience has resonated with you.
[00:31:45] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: Yeah, I would say that that is true. There is a lot more openness to games, especially when we go in with a game and somehow, some way we get the coolest 12-year-old in the class to be like, this is okay and this doesn't suck. And you know, the teacher's like, oh my gosh.
Right. And I think teachers. Especially are catching on with administrators. It's of course there's risk involved. There's a lot they have to manage, so it, it's a little bit tougher to get in. I would say that what the key is, is that gaming. And engagement cannot be your only value proposition, right? As you go into a district or a classroom, right?
Teachers are great at making things engaging, right? And so it is a huge plus that we are extremely engaged in for students, that we bring them this, you know, shared and unique and representational experience, but when it comes down to it, school side of limited budgets, we have to solve an urgent problem.
And that urgent problem is, is not usually. Our curriculum isn't a game or our things aren't game, so, and they're not fun. The urgent problem is we have students like the one I mentioned earlier, that are having violent behavior incidents and are unable to self-regulate. Or we have students that are in an inclusive classroom where they're completely siloed.
On their disability and they're not speaking to each other and they're feeling isolated. Right? Or we have, you know, a giant special education teacher shortage, and we have teachers that are not prepared or equipped to work with neurodivergent students. Thus making it harder and harder for these neurodivergent students to climb out of this hole of low self-esteem or a feeling behind and not getting the sports they need.
Those are the value propositions that you have to meet. Being a game is a great medium for that. So I think that's the most important thing I would say is that when your value proposition is not just being a game, it is just the medium that you are delivering things through and you can deliver results through that.
Yes. That is what teachers and what admins are open to.
[00:33:52] Lucy Stevens: I have something to add as well too, I think to Vanessa's really good point. Yeah. The story I'll tell Alex is I went with our lead developer, Joel, to a special ed teacher conference here. It was in Irvine, I think at that point here in Southern California.
Mm-hmm. To. Interview and figure out more of how teachers use technology in classrooms because I think that you are right that there is morbid understanding, but it is still a huge barrier. Huge problem. People don't, you know, want another, another thing to learn, another thing to download there. So we were at a conference trying to figure this out.
We were approached by, actually, it was someone who was presenting, who was like, Hey, I have this teacher here who heard you guys are working with games, and she is desperate to connect with one of her students who he's neurodivergent and Minecraft is his thing. Right. And she was just like, help me. You know?
So I, I think that, and she was an older woman. We asked, like, she was not a gamer herself, really didn't understand anything, but she was like, what? She understood. Was, this was the way to get to her kid. And she was like, what do I do? And we're like, okay, let's talk about Minecraft for education. You know, let's talk about like having him, how can you use Minecraft to have him build things that are, you know, maybe like more social emotional learning related.
Right. Joel and I worked with this teacher, but I think that that was a great anecdote of the relationship. A lot of teachers, even if they aren't gamers themselves, which more and more are. Yeah. Which I think is fantastic. Talking to folks that are like, oh, I 100% get what you're doing. But even for folks that maybe aren't there.
They're still living in this reality where so many of their kids are gamers and they see that and they wanna connect with them. And I think that's like goes to my second point, which is really that this feeds onto what Vanessa was saying of people expect, they hear game in the classroom. And I think that there is an expectation of like, okay, great.
I just plunked my kid down in front of this screen. Outcomes bound. Wow. Okay. Things happen and when it comes to social emotional learning, which has social in the name, right. What I think we're trying is sort of a underlying key piece of what we're doing is that if we are successful, you as a practitioner or as a teacher are connecting more fully and more authentically with your students.
That is the first sort of strut of that social, emotional or learning building that is happening is with the teacher and with peers around them. So when I hear that kids are playing even a classroom and they're helping each other play through the levels, or they're comparing creations that they made in World Builder, right, that I think that's an outcome that people expect games of like, oh, it's like a siloed sort of individual miracle experience that will just like transform the kid.
And I think that that is really our. Mission is like getting people to sort of think more socially about the gaming experience in a classroom.
[00:36:34] Alex Sarlin: Such amazing points across the board there. I think the idea that games can be an icebreaker, they can, if you can convince the, the cool kids in the class that it doesn't suck that you have an in, but you have to solve real problems.
The school's budgets are not there just to engage. Kid engagement can't be the the end solution and it's just a icebreaker. It's just a way in. Incredibly powerful. And then, Lucy, such a great example. You know, I think. People are desperate to meet kids where they are. Some teachers have a lot of understanding of that game world and of of the type of interest that kids have.
Like Minecraft, it's absolutely ubiquitous. And others say, all he talks about is Minecraft. All he wants to do is Minecraft. I can't reach him. A game is a way to break through. Both of those are such powerful examples. I wanted to double click on this social piece that you just mentioned, Lucy, because I think this is such an interesting point.
I think people do often think of not just games, but educational technology as a sort of isolating experience. You know, kids are off on their own doing. Questions on getting adaptive feedback. Maybe if they're lucky they're playing a game. But it's very isolating. And I think you just named a few different ways in which Social Cipher can be social.
Uh, right. It could be kids playing together, they could be designing levels together in your world builder. They could be comparing creations, but I'd love to talk about that more because I'm so curious, you know, have you considered a multiplayer version of Social Cipher, Vanessa?
[00:37:49] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: Yeah, we have considered one.
I think that that brings in a whole lot of other stuff with bringing in different chats, a whole new gameplay mode. There's a lot to consider there. And I think what we wanted to do with Ava Wright is, you know, just like the book you read in English class, we want students to be able to kind of have that an experience for themselves and then share their interpretation of that experience with other students.
So, for example, what we found in another one of our case studies in a school in Northern California, we actually found in this inclusive classroom, which had students who were autistic, gifted, non-speaking, minimally speaking selectively. So many different complex needs in one classroom. What we found by these kids being able to have their experience where they make Ava's choices, right, which can vary, right?
And they can take them down some different paths.
[00:38:41] Lucy Stevens: Yeah.
[00:38:42] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: By doing that, right, they were able to start to kind of talk about what was going on, about not only their own personal experience in the game, but their experiences in their personal life, right? And open up about that and kind of lean on the experience of Ava to not feel so vulnerable about it, right?
Because if you're able to say he was feeling this way and I felt that way before.
[00:39:07] Lucy Stevens: Right. It's
[00:39:07] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: a lot easier to open up that way than to just kind of be asked on the spot about how you feel. But by using Ava as kind of that agent, which is why having that individual play experience is so important, they're able to have that kind of opening up and close relationship.
And what we also saw in this classroom, right, was that that it of course helped students be able to kind of regulate their emotions when they felt overwhelmed. But it was really cool. Were. For example, in our trust module, which we talked about previously for this particular classroom, a lot of students were viewing conflict through a revenge based lens.
[00:39:42] Lucy Stevens: Hmm.
[00:39:42] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: If I'm in conflict with someone, then yeah, I'm gonna take revenge on them at some point and whatever the seventh grade version of that is. Right. But when they. Played through the trust module and had these conversations about these individual experiences, which they could have trusted Zeke and recruited them on their crew.
They could have not, they all had different experiences. They were actually able to talk together and come to this conclusion that, oh, there are perspectives that we can take of other people that we're in conflict with. Create apologies and accept apologies and actually move forward with people without having to take this revenge on things.
Right. And we also saw, you know, these increased peer collaboration after these individual experiences where students with lower support needs, right, would maybe get through the game a little bit early and then yeah, they'd be able to help. Students that have higher support needs with this knowledge they already had through their own journey.
So I think that multiplayer is definitely an option in the future, but I think we really wanna see how students are continuing being sort of the main characters in their own stories.
[00:40:48] Alex Sarlin: Totally. And I can imagine lots of curricular solutions, uh, the, you know, ways to deliver Social Cipher that have social components, like you're saying, people could vote on decisions or they could collaborate on various aspects of the game or compare.
It's really powerful. It's, I mean, it's such an exciting. Way to envision what social emotional learning can look like, especially for neuro neurodivergence. But just in general, the idea of being able to have these deeper conversations about what you're feeling, how you deal with stress, how you deal with relationships and trust.
It feels like a really powerful aspect of school. We've been talking on this podcast for a while about how there's been a, an anxiety. Crisis in schools since the pandemic. I mean, we've seen incredibly high levels of stress and depression and anxiety. And I'm curious, you know, Lucy, pass this to you, you know, I'm curious what that's meant for Social Ciphers journey.
Does that mean that when you knock on the door and say, we're doing social emotional learning, they go, oh, thank goodness we are having all these behavioral issues. Kids are so isolated and anxious, or do you feel like they're overwhelmed already in trying to just figure out how to do it on their own?
What does it mean to be a a social emotional learning tool? In the 2020s where social, emotional, or wellness is sort of paramount.
[00:41:55] Lucy Stevens: Great. Question. I think that as we are seeing probably in so many different areas of education, it depends on where you go. I think that that is the truth of the matter, especially when it comes to social emotional learning.
Yeah. Some folks like to talk about it in different language, but I think most people do kind of have like, and in reality support. I think a lot of the, the tenants of social emotional learning, they just might call it something different. Yeah. So I would say. That should be kept in mind. I think in talking with this is, it really depends on where you go, but I think in terms of our target states and our target schools, folks are super thankful.
There's stress and there's, you know, there's like, okay, we, we have these problems. Vanessa was talking about this teacher who's like having enormous outburst issues and teachers are having a hard time, kids are having a hard time. I think we all know this. Anyone that works in educational technology knows this.
What I was going to say that I, that I has really stuck with me. This is from a conference. I went to briefly a couple years ago about social emotional learning, was an expert was saying that what kids really are struggling with that is like the root cause of, you know, depression and anxiety is a lack of meaning and purpose.
Yeah. I think that actually many, many kids, especially neurodivergent learners, lack. Meaning and purpose to their lives. Like it's hard to, you know, Vanessa has spoken on this a little bit of her own lived experience of like, where do I fit? How do my contributions matter? What am I doing? And I think also, of course, for many kids, I think like we're seeing this across general education, special education.
I think a lot of kids, you know, in this information age too, where perhaps the effects of climate change or other things are becoming, you know, it's, it's hard to look away from, I think the information that. Given to so many kids. And that among, I think a lot of other factors that are too long to even get into on this podcast are contributing to a huge lack of meaning and purpose for kids.
That then compounds into this increased anxiety, increased depression. So for me, I think. One of just the most important things we could do as a company would be to help give these kids purpose and meaning and an understanding of this is how I can connect with others. And like, again, Vanessa can speak to this more from her experience, but this is how I can be a friend to someone.
This is how I can support someone. This is how, hey, maybe I communicate differently, but that's okay because I can still be like a participating member of what is going on and have meaningful contributions. Right? And so I think that. That again, is also why I think the tapping into that literal social ecosystem that the kids are already in of their classroom with the teacher and with their peers and with like other members of the school system is so key to having, that's like the first step of like having meaning is like, okay, do I belong in my class?
Right. So at any rate, that's what I see as like the real root in so many ways of this anxiety piece.
[00:44:46] Alex Sarlin: Amazing. Yeah. Meaning, purpose, belonging. Yeah. I definitely think we are in a crisis of sort of helplessness, especially for young people. And you mentioned climate change is one of the causes. I agree with that.
I feel like there's been some really good research on that. People just feel like this thing's going on in the world, they can't control. They don't know that they're headed in the right direction. They think they're probably headed not in the right direction, and they don't know what their role is and how they can help.
Then nobody feels good in that situation, no matter what kind of background you have that nobody feels like that's good. So I think there's a. It's a really interesting point. We have gone this far in the conversation and we have not mentioned ai, so I'm gonna mention it. I just wanna ask both of you. In a very high level way, AI is transforming or at least has the potential to transform education technology.
It also has the potential to transform gaming happening a lot in the game industry there. AI for doing non-player characters, AI for developing assets and music, you know, all sorts of things. So with AI transforming both education and gaming, how do you see it transforming Social Cipher? Lucy?
[00:45:44] Lucy Stevens: Great question.
So just to be super upfront about it, right now, we don't utilize AI in the product. You know, we're trying to be sort of slow and intentional is what I would say. Okay. I'm definitely really curious to see what sort of sticks around and what is discarded. You know, as we keep moving down this path in, in the next few years, it feels like we're, you know, reaching this like big, big wave and Okay.
Like what will like, sort of be at the other side of that. So I, as a note on my position for Social Cipher, I do all of our art, basically all of our 2D assets. I, you know, we have animators that come in on the team that do some other things, but, but I think that there is a lot of conversation around AI in the artist community, especially generative ai.
And so I think that our stance at this point is like continuing to have human made. Assets or, or things like that in the game. What I will say is, you know, we're definitely more interested in sort of design methods like procedural generation, if you're familiar with that, which is basically allowing your game engine to randomly generate things based on a predetermined set of attributes, which is like widely used in a lot of different existing games and pre preed AI for a long time.
So I think that that's sort of more our path for now. 'cause I think that really what AI. Answers in a lot of ways is like a, a content question. And so that's sort of our, our answer for the, for the content question at this point. But yeah, I think that wanting to see like sort of what sticks around and what fades in the next few years is definitely a great interest to us too.
[00:47:08] Alex Sarlin: That makes sense. How about you, Vanessa? How do you think about AI and what it may offer or why steer away from it for a Social Cipher?
[00:47:15] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: Yeah, I think that Lucy said a lot of it best. I think there's a lot of potential in the future for maybe, yeah, different conversations or different practice with social emotional learning, uh, or interactions.
But I think right now, yeah, focusing on kind of human made and the story we're building is really big. I will say that one thing we are doing to build. A little more and kind of like tread slowly into the AI kind of sphere is we are actually partnering with understood.org to have an AI assistant on our site that brings in very curated and vetted information from Social Cipher and from all of our resources, as well as from understood.org to help with visitors of our website, especially like teachers, counselors, parents, just better understand questions about Neurodivergence.
You know, like, why do kids with a DH, ADHD love video games? Why does it connect with them? And we have, you know, various resources, activities, all those things that'll pop up through the AI assistant that's gonna be launched very soon. So I think that that's kind of our first treading into it, and we're really, really happy to be doing it with such reputable and far reaching and wonderful.
Folks at understood org, which is an organization that is just an absolute leader in neurodiversity awareness and understanding of Neurodivergence. So also check them out.
[00:48:34] Alex Sarlin: Fantastic. We've gotten this far and we haven't talked about IEPs, so I just wanna just really quickly make sure, because this is a big part of your story as well, you help address IEP goals.
Let me throw this one back to you, Vanessa. I know you think a lot about this. How does Social Cipher think about the IEP world?
[00:48:50] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: Yeah, great question. I think we definitely talk about it a lot in terms of accommodations and understanding underlying needs. So for example, in a lot of our professional development work we do, we do a lot of focus on professional learning surrounding supporting student underlying needs.
Talking about writing IEP goals more in terms of detecting those needs and fulfilling those needs in ways that work rather than trying to, you know, suppress behavior, get to a certain amount of times where a student has overcome that behavior. So I think that that's really big for us. I also think that Ava and the curriculum.
Because the curriculum has multiple ways that students can learn and demonstrate learning. I think that's also really huge. It just allows for a lot of flexibility and a lot of accessibility for students, depending on whether they have fine motor challenges or whether they're selectively or non-speaking.
Right? We have different ways that students can demonstrate learning and be able to progress on their behavior and communication. IEP goals. Through those ways, right? Yeah. And I think just constantly making these efforts more neurodiversity affirming, right? Like focusing on strengths. Focusing on just fulfilling needs.
And I think another big part of it, right, is. One big thing I focus on, which this is a term or a phrase that we learned from the folks at nas, which is one of the UK big special education organizations, when we were in Denmark for the Lego Foundation for our partnership, they were always talking about, it's all about diagnosing a need rather than needing a diagnosis.
And so really bringing that to teachers, especially those that are in inclusion classrooms, you know, that are working with students with multiple needs. Are gonna be students that are gonna be flying under the radar that are gonna be undiagnosed and diagnosis or not, it's still really necessary to meet those.
So I think that's a big part of it. Depending on when this is coming out, we could probably link our free webinar that we will have on neurodiversity affirming approaches to behavioral and communication IEP goals. That will be on September 10th, but will be available for recording after, so that'll be huge as well.
[00:51:02] Alex Sarlin: Fantastic. Yes. We'll make sure to link that in the show notes for the episode, depending on when this is made available, but this has been such an interesting conversation. We have Vanessa Castaneda Gill, the CEO, and Co-founder of Social Cipher, and Lucy Stevens, the co-founder and creative director.
Social Cipher is a company that makes social emotional learning video games. For Neurodivergent youth and the professionals who work with them. Thank you both so much for being here with us on EdTech Insiders.
[00:51:28] Lucy Stevens: Thanks for having us, Alex. Thank you so much.
[00:51:31] Alex Sarlin: Thanks for listening to this episode of EdTech Insiders.
If you like the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community. For those who want even more, EdTech Insider, subscribe to the Free EdTech Insiders Newsletter on substack.
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