Tending to our gaggle of youth. (Jeff Paterson)

Our latest and greatest friend of the BCEN and Friends podcast is Jeff Paterson. Jeff is the creator of Gaggle which helps focus on the risky student behavior of today’s youth. Bullying, self-harm, and mental health are just a few of the things that Jeff’s platform helps to shift the focus to so as to keep our young generation safe from harm of others, as well as themselves.

He is an entrepreneur at heart who started his first company when he was only FOUR YEARS OLD! Yes, you read that correctly. Was it successful? According to his Mom, not so much because he couldn’t find the right investors for it.

But that alone did not stop Jeff from becoming his own boss for the past two decades. Now, he successfully runs Gaggle which originally began as an email platform for students and teachers. Now it has grown to focus on the safety and well-being that our young face in their day-to-day and its focus is to keep our children safe, by any means necessary. This platform allows reps to monitor our adolescents e-mail in a safe and secure way.

Jeff offers some alarming statistics that we should all be aware of – every year, there are 6,000 students between the ages of 7 and 24 that commit suicide. Although every case is unique in itself, Jeff hopes to drop these numbers as low as possible through Gaggle.

We have even learned that some students will use different tools, including a paper clip or staple to scratch at themselves in order to inflict self-harm. Although this may not seem like anything to concern most parents or guardians, Jeff informs us that this is a tell-tell sign that a student’s mental health is not at its absolute best. Should anything this small be brought to light, we might be able to prevent the outcries of a potential suicide before it happens. Little things, just like this, are the exact statistics that Gaggle takes into account, every day.

With the COVID crisis, Jeff wants parents and teachers to be even more informed of the small issues that could arise to become larger ones. In his words, “this is our gap year” so if our students do not learn as much as they did last year, that’s OK. We are in the midst of change and the most important part of that is making sure our children understand that change is not always a bad thing.

Tune in to this episode of the BCEN and Friends podcast for more great tips that Jeff has to say about how to recognize signs of brewing issues that we, as parents, may not notice otherwise. As both a parent and concerned citizen, he has valuable insight for people across every spectrum of life and his wisdom is absolutely astonishing.

Feel free to follow our latest guest, Jeff Patterson, on social media-

His website: http://www.gaggle.net/

LinkedIn: Gaggle

Twitter: @Gaggle_K12

CLICK HERE for a transcript of this Episode