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Every building runs two communication systems: the formal one of memos and meetings, and the informal one that moves through hallways, staffrooms, and group texts. The informal system is faster, and when staff are anxious it wins. Dr. Cathy White opens with a story about a late-night arrest outside her home that had become "the special ed director was arrested" by morning, then reframes gossip in schools as a workaround rather than a character flaw. Teachers gossip when they lack information, don't know what a decision means for their own job, don't feel safe speaking up, or don't trust the source. Banning it backfires. The better move for school leaders is diagnostic: find the problem the gossip is solving, then build a formal channel that solves it better.

If you have a gossip problem, ask:

1. Is this an information problem? Are we leaving big blanks about what's happening or what's coming?
2. Is this a meaning problem? Have we told people what's happening without telling them what it means for their workload, their team, their role?
3. Is this a voice problem? Do staff believe it's unsafe or pointless to raise concerns through official channels?
4. Is this a trust problem? Do staff hear the message and go looking elsewhere for the "real story"?

About The Unintended School
The Unintended School explores what happens when reasonable choices, good intentions, and everyday habits create consequences we never meant to build into the system.

Go deeper:
Beyond Relationships: Building Capacity Through Better School Systems
Dr. Cathy White
LinkedIn

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Least restrictive environment was designed to protect students with disabilities from unnecessary exclusion, but over time, schools have reduced their capacity to provide for students with disabilities in the general education settings. Without building the staffing, expertise, time, coordination, and alternative supports needed, it is difficult to make inclusion work well.

When that capacity is missing, the gap doesn’t disappear. Someone absorbs it.

Too often, that someone is the teacher.

In this episode of The Unintended School, Dr. Cathy White uses LRE as a case study for a much larger systems problem: what happens when schools respond to structural capacity gaps by asking individual educators to work harder, differentiate more, build stronger relationships, write better behavior plans, and somehow make an under-resourced system function.

Inclusion matters. Providing all students with access to a Free Appropriate Public Education matters. The question is whether we’re asking good teaching to compensate for capacity gaps in the system.

You’ll also be introduced to the Capacity Gap Audit, a free tool for identifying pressure points, naming the capacity that’s missing, determining who is currently absorbing the gap, and finding the smallest system move that could begin to reduce it.

👉Download it here: tools.drcathywhite.com/capacity

No. 1 Concern: Educators Organize for Better Working Conditions

NCES Fast Facts: Students With Disabilities

About The Unintended School
The Unintended School explores what happens when reasonable choices, good intentions, and everyday habits create consequences we never meant to build into the system.

Go deeper:
Beyond Relationships: Building Capacity Through Better School Systems
Dr. Cathy White
LinkedIn

Send us Fan Mail

Can a School Be Trauma-Informed If the System Isn’t?

Schools increasingly understand the importance of predictability, safety, regulation, relationships, voice, and choice.

But what happens when we ask people to practice those principles inside systems characterized by ambiguity, overload, shifting expectations, and chronic urgency?

This episode looks at the gap between trauma-informed practice and the operating conditions we create for both students and adults.

In this episode:

• Why trauma-informed practices and trauma-informed systems aren't necessarily the same thing
• How well-intended support initiatives can create additional invisible work
• The difference between visible improvement and structural improvement
• How ambiguity and chronic urgency contribute to dysregulation
• What it might mean to design school systems that support regulation instead of continually demanding it

Related reading:
This episode draws from Chapter 1, “Movement Without Relief,” in Beyond Relationships: Building Capacity Through Better School Systems. The chapter examines how visible improvement can coexist with increasing operational strain underneath it.

Think about it:
Where does your school teach people to manage stress that the system itself may be generating?

About The Unintended School
The Unintended School explores what happens when reasonable choices, good intentions, and everyday habits create consequences we never meant to build into the system.

Go deeper:
Beyond Relationships: Building Capacity Through Better School Systems
Dr. Cathy White
LinkedIn