Name: Raquel Monge
Position: Clinical Intern and Mental Health Counselor for All-In! KIPP Bayview Elementary
 
What led you to your current position? My passion has always been in social work. I started with Seneca in SF Connections as an ISS Mobile Counselor. Shortly after, I started my MSW program with USC and found my niche in school social work! I joined the All-In Program last year and have grown so much in my professional development. I LOVE the opportunities I get to serve kiddos and families in the Bayview/Hunter’s Point neighborhood.
 
Fun Fact/Quote? In December I will be graduating from my MSW program! Yay! 😊
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What does your average day look like? My average day involves supporting KIPP Bayview Elementary (TK-2) with the implementation of their multi-tiered system. This is Seneca’s first year partnering with KIPP, so helping set the precedent for school wellness is one of my top priorities. I provide consultation for staff, Tier 2 supports in the form of social skills, and Tier 3 individual counseling services for students.
 
Why do you do this work? I do this work because I love working in this community and helping provide a holistic approach to care in the education setting. I believe that every student has the right to access their education in a way that suits their individual needs and promotes healing and success. Creating safe spaces in schools for children and families fills my bucket

​Kipp Bayview Elementary is in its second year of serving the Hunter's Point community with quality, early childhood education. Housing students from Transitional Kindergarten through second grade, KBE boasted a strong restorative approach to discipline and positive behavioral interventions before Seneca even entered the building. Now, in our first year of partnership together, Seneca and KBE are taking the next step in trauma-informed education for the children and families of our community. Gage McGarry, the Unconditional Education Coach at KBE, has been able to build on the three school-wide behavioral expectations, "Work Hard/Be Kind/Be Safe," and create a set of visuals that line the halls and various locations on campus. KBE students kicked off the year with engaging lessons at each major location on campus, practicing the school rules in each setting. The students also just had their kick-off assembly, in which students from every class were acknowledged with "Student of the Week" for meeting and exceeding these expectations. The classroom with the most Class Dojo points, the online school-wide currency system that KBE employs, received the Class of The Week award. So, what does a KBE student receive for these accomplishments? They get to spin a digital Wheel of Fortune to earn extra recess, special game time, class parties, or another exciting reward.

​While the Seneca and KBE staff have been focusing on explicit instruction and celebrating positive behaviors, they have also been responding to high levels of need on campus. Bayview/Hunter's Point is a strong community with a solid history of activism and sticking together through challenging times. It is also a neighborhood that has been historically undeserved and highly impacted by poverty and community violence. Many children at KBE demonstrate the internalizing and/or externalizing behaviors commonly associated with early childhood trauma exposure. While these behaviors can often make school a tricky place to be, our Clinical Intervention Specialist, Raquel Monge, and the rest of the KBE team are ready and willing to support all of their amazing students. One of our Kindergartners, who prefers to be called "Ice" or "Tony Stark," depending on his mood, was eloping and demonstrating risky behaviors on a daily basis (i.e. climbing to high places and threatening to jump off). Our staff have been working hard to develop strong, supportive relationships with Ice, and it is certainly paying off. Recently, Ice ran out of class and towards the staircase, which used to be a precursor for dangerous behavior. But this time, he ran right up to the UE Coach, grabbed his hand, and said "will you please help me fly like Superman back to my classroom?" The UE Coach smiled and said "Absolutely" before scooping Ice up and soaring down the hall to his classroom. For this little guy, that flight was evidence that he can trust the adults around him to keep him safe and meet his needs at school. We are so proud of Ice and all of our KBE students for the new skills they are acquiring and the hard work they do everyday. Keep your eye on this new little school in Hunter's Point! They are certainly on a path to greatness this year.
 

​This year marks our 10th year of implementing integrated school-based programs in the vision of what we have come to call Unconditional Education. As we celebrate this milestone and kick off the new school year, it is exciting to reflect on what has changed over that time and the work that is still ahead. When we started this work ten years ago, few schools readily made connections between a students’ academic achievement and their emotional wellness. Fewer still utilized a systematic approach to improving culture and climate as a foundation to promote equitable student outcomes. In our time, we have seen discussions of culture and climate and trauma informed practices readily integrated into the lexicon of schools. In addition, we have seen the adoption of the California state dashboard which institutes accountability measures related to social emotional well-being and the performance of students in special education, and the introduction of initial legislative efforts to incentivize collaboration between school districts and county mental health departments. 

Moving into this new school year, our Unconditional Education programs have continued to grow! This school year we have:
·         48 school or network partners implementing some or all of the UE model
·         12 partners who are new this school year
·         158 staff, which includes:​​​
                           - 48 Clinical Intervention Specialists & Interns
                           - 42 Student Support & Mental Health Counselors
                           - 17 UE Coaches
                           - 9 Academic Intervention Specialists
                           - 6 School Psychologists & Interns
                           - 3 Speech Providers
                           - 2 Occupational Therapists

​With this breadth of collaboration our potential is greater than ever and new state level legislative priorities provide opportunities for further impact.
Looking forward to a safe and happy school year ahead!

Name: Chelsea Hara
Your Position?  Academic Intervention Specialist

What led you to your current position? I was seeking an opportunity to become a special education teacher post grad. I was searching for numerous positions until the position with Seneca jumped out at me. I loved the message about unconditional care within the school systems and also staff members. That is something everyone strives for but Seneca holds it with every best intention. I immediately expressed interests, had some interviews, made a decision, and the rest is history. This is my first job EVER out of college and I am confident enough to say that I believe I made an amazing decision. 

Fun Fact/Quote? I grew up in Vallejo, CA but moved to New Jersey when I was about 3 years old and lived there for 15 years. I recently graduated from West Chester University of Pennsylvania and moved to San Francisco a month after graduating! You could say I live coast to coast!

What does your average day look like?  My average day looks like me implementing Specialized Academic Instruction to students in grades ranging from 2nd to 5th grade. When I am not working with students I have prep time, collaboration time, or meetings with team members. 

Why do you do this work? I do this work because of the deep passion I have for serving students who have not been served in the past. I have experience with being underestimated with the power of my knowledge due to a label given to me on paper and I want to give my students the power they deserve. I believe every student takes their own time and path to get where they need to be. Sometimes with a little help along the way which is more than okay. I want to be that person to help those students find what it is they need to be their most successful self.

​As the school year wraps up and summer nears, I relish the opportunity to spend some quieter time investing in my own professional growth and learning and seek inspiration for the coming year. I often get asked by others doing the same about books or resources have helped inform Unconditional Education or continue to inspire our team. Here are a five of my current favorites that focus on relationship, connection and supporting the well-being of educators. These are important topics essential to building strong and healthy communities of practice. Enjoy!

​Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators by Elana Aguilar
Onward tackles the problem of educator stress and provides a practical framework for taking the burnout out of teaching. Stress is part of the job, but when 70 percent of teachers quit within their first five years because the stress is making them physically and mentally ill, things have gone too far. Unsurprisingly, these effects are highest in difficult-to-fill positions such as math, science, and foreign languages, and in urban areas and secondary classrooms—places where we need our teachers to be especially motivated and engaged. By cultivating resilience in schools, we help ensure that we are working in, teaching in, and leading organizations where every child thrives, and where the potential of every child is recognized and nurtured. Onward provides a step-by-step plan for reigniting that spark.

Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond
To close the achievement gap, diverse classrooms need a proven framework for optimizing student engagement. Hammond draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to offer an innovative approach for designing and implementing brain-compatible culturally responsive instruction, including: 

• Information on how one’s culture programs the brain to process data and affects learning relationships
• Ten "key moves" to build students’ learner operating systems and prepare them to become independent learners
• Prompts for action and valuable self-reflection

While focused on instruction, this book provides valuable information for all!

​Teaching in Context: The Social Side of Education Reform Edited by Esther Quintero
Teaching in Context provides new evidence from a range of leading scholars showing that teachers become more effective when they work in organizations that support them in comprehensive and coordinated ways. The studies featured in the book suggest an alternative approach to enhancing teacher quality: creating conditions and school structures that facilitate the transmission and sharing of knowledge among teachers, allowing teachers to work together effectively, and capitalizing on what we know about how educators learn and improve. The studies also show how social dynamics influence the speed, depth, and success with which any new idea is implemented, and how policies enacted without adequate consideration of their impact on the social fabric of schools can produce unintended negative consequences. Policies aimed at improving teaching should focus on strengthening the organization as a whole so that all teachers are likely to improve.

​In Schools We Trust: Creating Communities of Learning in an Era of Testing and Standardization by Deborah Meier
We are in an era of radical distrust of public education. Increasingly, we turn to standardized tests and standardized curricula-now adopted by all fifty states-as our national surrogates for trust. In this multilayered exploration of trust and schools, Meier critiques the ideology of testing and puts forward a different vision, forged in the success stories of small public schools she and her colleagues have created in Boston and New York. These nationally acclaimed schools are built, famously, around trusting teachers-and students and parents-to use their own judgment. Meier traces the enormous educational value of trust; the crucial and complicated trust between parents and teachers; how teachers need to become better judges of each others' work; how race and class complicate trust at all levels; and how we can begin to 'scale up' from the kinds of successes she has created.

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Teaching with Vitality: Pathways to Health and Wellness for Teachers & Schools by Peggy Bennett
Perhaps more than any other experience, conflict in schools and workplaces can zap our energy and steal our vigor as teachers. If we knew ways to minimize conflict and maximize vitality, would we use them? Teaching with Vitality offers specific behaviors and attitudes to reframe conflict by diluting and dissolving it.

Organized into brief topics for busy readers, Teaching with Vitality combines common experiences and practical options for lessening the turmoil that is inevitable in schools. As beneficent stewards of our children, educators are priceless contributors to the quality of our lives. The main goal of Teaching with Vitality is to elevate teachers in their day-to-day lives by deconstructing the major and minor conflicts that sap their peace and dampen their power. School wellness is contagious. And, this book aims to offer daily pathways to health, wellness, and vigor.

​What are some of your favorites and what’s next on your work-related reading list? Share in the comments below!

I wanted to share the essay “Privileged”. The article was written by NBA player Kyle Korver and caused quite a bit of controversy last month. It’s a great read and you’ll be glad that you did, but if you just don’t have the time, here are some points that impacted me:

• It is an intensely personal essay from the perspective of a successful white man. It explores the privilege he's been granted as a such and how much it took for him to “get it”. He admits being unsympathetic for a long time. 
• Kyle discusses his ability to opt in and out of tough conversations whereas people of color cannot.
• Kyle Korver has tasked himself with becoming a "part of the solution" against racism and put forth some of his own efforts, including:

• "I have to continue to educate myself on the history of racism in America."
• "I have to listen. I'll say it again, because it's that important. I have to listen."
• "I have to support leaders who see racial justice as fundamental -- as something that's at the heart of nearly every major issue in our country today."
• "I have to do my best to recognize when to get out of the way -- in order to amplify the voices of marginalized groups that so often get lost."

While the essay is not the solution to all our problems, it is a great start! The article is extremely well written and what really got me is that you can tell the emotional turmoil he was having while writing it. Hopefully, this article creates a domino effect of self-awareness!