​Hi everyone and HAPPY SCHOOL YEAR!!!!
 
As we embark on another school year, I’m filled with excitement for the impact we can create through the work we do in our Unconditional Education (UE) School Partnership Program. Our mission: to increase the academic performance and social-emotional well-being of the most struggling students at our partner schools, and to increase the capacity of partner schools in delivering effective interventions to all students through the implementation of a multi-tiered framework - aims to ensure that every student, regardless of their circumstances, receives the tools and resources needed to thrive academically and emotionally. Whether you’re a UE coach or a Student Support Assistant/Mental Health Counselor, this year is an opportunity to deepen our partnership with schools, refine our practices, and lead with equity, empathy, and purpose. Each of us plays a critical role in advancing the work of Unconditional Education, and how we begin the year sets the tone for what’s possible.
 
To bring our mission to life, we must be intentional about how we engage with our schools and communities. There are several key areas that can guide our work and lay the foundation for meaningful impact. Let's explore how we approach these in the bigger picture, starting with building collaborative school partnerships.
 
Building Collaborative School Partnerships
Our program centers around collaboration, and the first few months of the school year are pivotal for building strong, trusting relationships with our school partners. This partnership isn’t just about what we deliver; it’s about listening to the unique needs of each school and co-creating solutions that honor their community and culture. Remember, we are not just service providers—we are thought partners and advocates, working alongside school teams to ensure that both staff and students feel seen, heard, and supported.
 
Cultivating Safe, Inclusive Environments
A core principle of Unconditional Education is fostering environments where every student feels safe, valued, and can thrive. We all have the shared responsibility of creating spaces that nurture not only academic growth but social-emotional development. This year, I encourage you to be proactive in shaping classrooms and campuses where all students—regardless of background or behavior—know they belong. I know this is no easy feat so remember, you’re not in this alone!
 
Centering Equity and Trauma-Informed Practices with a Healing-Centered Approach
Equity is at the heart of what we do. As we dive into the school year, let’s continue to prioritize trauma-informed/healing and equity-centered practices. Many of the students, families, and sometimes school partners we serve face significant challenges, and it’s essential that we approach each interaction with a mindset rooted in understanding and compassion. As you work within your schools, take time to reflect on how we can reduce barriers to learning and provide tailored interventions that support each student’s individual journey.

​
Balancing Professionalism and Flexibility
Working in schools requires a delicate balance of professionalism and flexibility. While we each have clear roles and responsibilities, the reality of school life often demands adaptability. Lean into that flexibility, be open to feedback, and remain solution-oriented when challenges arise. At the same time, maintaining professionalism in communication, documentation, and interactions with school partners is key to sustaining trust and accountability in our partnerships.
 
Investing in Ourselves and Each Other
Lastly and most importantly, let’s not forget the importance of supporting one another. We are a team of passionate professionals committed to creating change, but we can only do that if we care for ourselves and each other. This year, make space for self-care, lean on your colleagues, and continue to seek out supervision and professional development. Our work is demanding, and we need to invest in our own well-being as much as we invest in the schools we serve.
 
As we step into the new school year, let’s hold onto the vision of what’s possible when we bring Unconditional Education to life. Together, we can create transformative experiences for students, empower our school partners, and continue to push the boundaries of what education can be.
 
Here’s to a year of growth, collaboration, and impact!
 
In solidarity and in so much appreciation,
 
Amber

Blog Post by: Amber Fretwell, Executive Director of School Partnerships

​

• Position: Senior Administrative Assistant 
• What led you to your current position? I started working with kids from a young age, and slowly transitioned to more admin focused roles at youth-centered organizations. When searching for a new work opportunity, working as an admin assistant for the UE program looked like the perfect fit! 
• What inspires you to do this work? Hearing from our leaders and staff about the services we are providing kids is inspiring to me! I am thankful to play apart from behind the scenes and contribute towards our mission of unconditional education.
• What is a recent highlight you’ve experienced in the work or an important lesson you’ve learned in this role? I've recently visited some school sites, and a highlight was getting to make more connections in person with UE staff and see all the different schools that we partner with. It's awesome to put names to faces! 
• Share your life motto or something unique about yourself. A recent quote I heard that resonates with me: "Everyday, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen." 

 
The Longwood Elementary counseling enriched classroom team at HEART held a very successful family fun pizza night at Roundtable Pizza Hayward. One of HEART’s intentions this past school year was to find more time for community building and Family engagement. There was 100% turnout by our families and all of the Longwood team attended. The family feedback shared was that they all had a wonderful time and loved having the chance to connect with other families with shared experiences. The team all shared that it was a great experience to spend time with families having fun outside of the school day. This was such a success that our program has planned a family movie night for all seven of our classrooms to see Inside Out 2 on June 18th. We’re looking forward to continuing these events with our families!

Blog Post By: Leslie Davidson, Clinical Director

Our annual Unconditional Education Student and Client Satisfaction Survey kicked off this Spring to gather unique perspectives, highlights, ideas, and feedback from the youth (8 years-old and above) across all our school-based programs. Our team is always eager to learn more about how we can continue providing services to best support the youth we serve.

The insights the youth in our programs have provided help shape and identify how we can continue to improve our services and supports. With 68% of our student population participating in the client satisfaction survey this year, here are some highlights from the responses:
​

• 92% said that Seneca staff appreciate my strengths, talents, and accomplishments.  
• 88% said that Seneca Staff help me to share my ideas about my experiences and who I am.
• 83% said that Seneca Staff care about my culture, values, and beliefs and asks me questions about them.
• 94% said that Seneca Staff believe in me and my ability to achieve my goals.
• 87% said that I have say in choosing my own therapy or behavior goals.
• 78% said that I have met my therapy or behavior goals with the help of Seneca staff.
• 93% said that Seneca staff believe I can do well, even when things are hard.
• 88% said that Seneca staff make time to have fun with me.

​We also heard directly from students about how their lives have changed with Seneca, things that they have learned, and how we can improve our services and support. Our youth voiced key themes of making more school friends and strengthening relationships in life, feeling successful and confident at school, and learning new skills towards developing personal growth. Here are a few direct positive quotes that embodies those themes:

As much as it’s rewarding to hear positive affirmations about how our services are being felt, our team will make sure to acknowledge any areas for growth to continually refine and strengthen the services we provide for all stakeholders. ​

​When it comes to using literacy to celebrate different cultures, John Muir Elementary has the magic touch. This K-5 school located in the lower Haight neighborhood of San Francisco is in their second year of partnership with Seneca. Unconditional Education Coach, Raquel Monge, has stepped in to support Muir's "Read-In" program.

During each cultural celebration month, the school brings in members of that cultural/ethnic group to read a story to each classroom. During Black History month, Raquel shared her perspective on the African diaspora in Latin America and read Michelle Obama: Former First Lady and Role Model by Grace Hansen to a bilingual second grade class.
​
Muir celebrates LGBTQ+ Pride month early, and this year, Raquel invited Jonathan Tugbenyoh, Director of School Partnerships, to read Papa, Daddy, and Riley by Seamus Kirst to a bilingual Kindergarten class. Next up, Muir will be a Multicultural Celebration in the month of May. Want to learn more about this innovative way of bringing literacy into cultural celebrations? Reach out to [email protected].

Blog Post By: Jonathan Barnett Tugbenyoh, Director of School Partnerships

Located in Fremont, California, our Walters Middles School CE classroom is part of our longest partnership with the Fremont Unified School District. This classroom is one of our most unique since we get the opportunity to have a Seneca teacher. Our Walters classroom teaches 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students. Most of our students come from our elementary CE classroom in Fremont to ensure a smooth transition into middle school.  

Our amazing teacher Vina Nabor has created a strong community where our students get to be creative with their learning. During this year our students read a couple of plays and had fun choosing a character and changing their voice when reading out loud. For science, the students have had an opportunity to do hands-on projects to help them understand various Science topics.  Being able to learn in a fun creative way has brought back some of the interest and creativity in subjects such as Science and History.
​
​Our therapist Shriya and counselors Sam and Melinda are always looking for creative ways to keep our students engaged. They have engaged in activities such as Shark Tank during the long testing days or created their own board game to work on some of those social skills. We are lucky to have the Walters team be part of our Constellation Program! ​

​Our Unconditional Education Partnership at Washington Elementary is built on the foundational values of love, compassion, and joy. We believe that Kindness is a powerful tool for nurturing the well-being of everyone and is a significant step towards empowering our students to be the best versions of themselves.
Kindness week serves as a reminder to everyone in the school community of the importance of treating others with compassion and respect, not just during the designated week but every day. By dedicating specific time and effort to celebrating Kindness, Washington Elementary not only enhances students’ social and emotional development but also strengthens the bonds within the school community. It cultivates a culture where acts of kindness are not just encouraged but celebrated, reinforcing the notion that everyone has a role to play in creating a positive culture and climate.  

​At Washington Elementary school, Kindness week has become a tradition, and every year during the second week in February, the school organizes week-long activities and challenges for students to participate in class and during lunch/recess. Previous projects include making “Kindness Chains”, “Kindness Jars”, “Kindness Bingo”, and reading different books on kindness with discussion prompts. With the goal of bringing the entire school community together, the school organizes an art project that is installed in a common area. This year the art project was for each student to create a “Square on Kindness” with their buddy student sharing either their favorite Kindness quote, a colorful drawing, or sharing what kindness means to them. The squares were all combined to create a giant Kindness poster to display in the library. The culminating art project, the Kindness poster, symbolizes the collective commitment of the school community to uphold and promote kindness, respect, and empathy. Displaying this poster prominently in the library not only serves as a visual reminder of the values espoused by Washington Elementary but also inspires ongoing acts of kindness and reinforces the sense of belonging among students, teachers, and staff. 

​Moreover, by involving students in planning and leading kindness activities, the school empowers them to take ownership of their school culture and climate and become active contributors. This not only boosts their self-esteem but also fosters leadership skills and a sense of responsibility towards others. 

​Overall, Kindness week at Washington Elementary goes beyond just a week-long celebration; it embodies the school’s dedication to nurturing the well-being of its students and fostering a supportive and inclusive learning environment where everyone can thrive. Through initiatives like Kindness week, Washington Elementary is laying the groundwork for a future generation that values empathy, compassion, and kindness in all aspects of life. 

In our work and in our teams, we’ve talked a lot about anti-oppression, we have also realized that the term (although super important in its emphasis on dismantling institutions of unjust power) seemed to be missing something. We have also become interested in liberation and decolonial lenses that look more deeply at the ways that oppression, identity, and power operate in our work.  Granted, there are a lot of ways to look at oppression and how it connects to a larger system of inequality.
 
While oppression focuses on the forces of powers that inhibit things about a person or community, liberation speaks to the possibility of constructive change.  To liberate is to reclaim and reposition in connection with others and the world around them. According to Castro and Afuape (2016) liberation is linked to “the transformative process of ‘conscientization’, in which we are both liberated and liberate, is dialectical, dialogical, relational and co-created. Therefore, no one person does the ‘liberating’. The development of critical consciousnesses is liberatory, as it creates space to reflect; be shaped by and shape the world and see new possibilities as creative ‘actors’ (rather than passive subjects) in our own experience.”
 
One of the fore-thinkers around a more liberational approach to psychotherapy was connected to Ignacio Martin-Baro. Drawing on Liberation Theology’s “preferential option for the poor,” Martin-Baro called on all of psychology—whether social, clinical, or educational—to stand on the side of the oppressed people of Latin America and join with them in the struggle for social justice (Gaztambide 2019). Inspired by Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy, Martin-Baro collaborated with marginalized communities in El Salvador to develop research projects that empowered them to articulate their experience of political dislocation and develop a critical consciousness of how those experiences were related to oppressive power structures. Unfortunately, he was murdered by the government of El Salvador because of his dissident viewpoints and his access to communal power through his religious community.
 
Through his experiences, Martin-Baro developed ideas around how one can engage with Liberation Psychology through the following approaches, which have also been re-interpreted into applications for psychotherapy.  They include:

1. Recovering Historical Memory: Not just our personal narratives but narratives of other generations, of other parts of our culture.
2. De-ideologizing of everyday experience: to reflect on the taken-for-granted assumptions about what counts as normal behavior, how these relate to wider discourses, whose agenda these discourses serve, as well as the effects of these ideas on therapeutic relationship.
3. Conscientization’– critical consciousness, dialogue, and relationship. Knowing where one stands or what values navigate our interactions.
4. Challenging Fatalismo (fatalism) – how do we challenge “it is what it is” states of mind

We invite all of our colleagues to think about how they may utilize some of these approaches in their work with young folks. Let’s start a discussion in our small groups and communities about whether these ideas feel helpful to the work that we do both on an individual and larger ecological scale.
 
Moving into Praxis:

• A video to highlight liberation-based work with trauma around racism, particularly the freeze response that may come up for our clients (below)
• From coping skills to empowerment/resistance skills: We are invited to think about this with our clients, to take some time to reflect on a client and identify what skills they currently use to cope with things, and to go a little further and think about what ways might be they may be able to better advocate for their sense of empowerment or resistance. 
• Check out the works of Taiwo Afuape, Gillian Huges, Daniel Jose Gaztambide, Lara Sheehi, and Jennifer Mullan just to name a few.

 
Thank you for reading, and for the work you do!

​​At Alhambra High School's Counseling Enriched Classroom, we believe that the connections you make and the emotions you feel can shape your behavior and your experience of the world. That's why we work hard to create a culture that values connections, inclusion, and positivity. Here are some of the specific things we do to uphold these values.

• Connection: The entire CEC team gathers daily to eat lunch together in the alternative/lunch classroom with students who choose to stay back from the larger campus or just want to access a comfortable and inviting space to eat their lunch. We open our door and welcome all students from the larger campus including friends/associates of the CEC students, school admin and teachers, and those that are interested in checking out the "Seneca" space (pictured). During this activity staff and students share laughter, stories, and connect on a human level outside of the rigors of a classroom setting.  

 

• Inclusion: We strive to always create an environment where every person, regardless of title, age, or gender, can be themselves. This means valuing the interactions that happen, modeling behaviors that we want and hope to see, using of gender-affirming pronouns or names, and creating an inviting space for self-expression, particularly in our therapy room (Check out the eclectic range of chair styles).

 

• Positivity: This is where we actively lean heavily into our Seneca's Equilibrium practices and training, with emphasis on Chapters 1 and 2 (familiarize yourself... if this statement sounds foreign to you 🙂). The underlying message of "working together" and being "here" for one another is more than just words but practices that we all take in our interactions as a team, in our exchanges with students and school partners, and how we continue to show up in all spaces. 

Our goal is for everyone who encounters the CEC program to have a positive experience and feel like they are part of the Bulldog community so that they may proudly repeat the school’s slogan of “Once a Bulldog, always a Bulldog!”