Blog Archives

STAFF HIGHLIGHT

3/9/2017

Name: Yajaira Cuapio
Position: Clinical Counseling Associate

What led you to your current position?
I began my career as a youth advocate in a residential setting for teens in the foster and juvenile system. It was actually my first job and I loved the challenges and joy that came with this experience. When I graduated college, I worked with college students in mentoring them and providing social support. Although working with college students was crucial to my personal and professional development, I had an eagerness to continue working with at-risk youth. I applied to Seneca and moved to San Francisco from Los Angeles in 2015. When I joined the Starr King team I was impressed with the integrity, passion, and joy of my colleagues. This has encouraged me to learn from every Senecan I meet. Prior to working with Seneca I knew I wanted to become a social worker so I applied to the embedded Seneca MSW@USC program and was accepted. I am currently in my third semester and have enjoyed the program thus far. It is very validating and rewarding to be in a field where I’m learning what my mind has always been so intrigued and curious about.

Fun Fact:
I visited San Francisco for the first time during my freshman year in college. I made a promise to myself that I would live and work in this amazing city, and serve youth in some capacity. I have not regretted that decision. The journey has been amazing.

What does your average day look like?
I wake up early to get some homework or reading done before work and usually have a cup of coffee before 8am. The first couple hours of my day are spent responding or sending emails and writing mental health notes. As the day continues, I support different students in different classrooms or staff the wellness center. I wrap up my work day by checking in with teachers or administrators or write more mental health notes. Depending on my day, I will go home and do some self-care before returning to my homework and readings.

Why do you do this work?
I do this work because I have a genuine passion and curiosity to empathize and care for people. My earliest memory of this was in daycare when my peers would cry because their caregivers dropped them off. I would comfort them by offering hugs and suggesting for us to play or color. Comforting others has been a long value of mine, and it only seemed appropriate that it would become my profession. As I’ve developed I have become more resilient in my own experiences as a woman of color, and the ways my family and I have been marginalized or vulnerable. This personal experience, and curiosity of others, is what encourages me to advocate and stand in solidarity with others. I understand that our social institutions are broken, and I want to be a light of hope to families that have been hindered by social systems.

What hope do you have for the future of All-In?
My hope for All-In is that we would increase family, school personnel, and community engagement on behalf of our clients! I truly believe they are our biggest allies in ensuring our clients meet their goals. There are multiple barriers that get in the way of this relationship, and my hope is that All-In prioritizes this as we move forward!

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STAFF GUEST POST: Arts as Intervention

3/9/2017

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Let's go back in time for a moment – imagine yourself at age 6. How did you express yourself when you were happy? Try to steer clear of words, but instead, consider how and with what did you play? How did you adorn yourself? Where did you go in your imagination? What colors, smells, sensations, sounds were around you?

Now think about those moments when, at age 6, you were the most angry, sad, frustrated, scared, and vulnerable. How did you comfort yourself? What useful coping skills do you, even as your adult self, still use?

For most of us, at age 6, we did not yet have the language to articulate our thoughts and feelings, our hurts and vulnerabilities, the reasoning behind our tears and anger. For most of us, sounds, movement, facial expression, and imagery are what we had to let the world know something was wrong, that we weren't okay in that moment. It isn't until later on in life that most people acquire the skill to verbalize, "I'm really angry right now because Johnny said something to me that was really rude." At age 6, especially for children with trauma, it is very difficult to access words and be able to work through the problem by "talking-it-out," as not only do they not yet know the words, but their frontal lobes, or impulse-and-reasoning control centers of their brains are completely offline and not at all finished with developing. Instead, children often express such feelings somatically, non-verbally, with wordless sounds, aggression, or by shutting down.

This is where the arts come in. As an Expressive Arts Therapist working with Elementary School aged youth, I have found that when children are the most escalated, or quite simply do not yet know the words for their overwhelming emotion, trying to use conversation will fail us as providers over and over again. I am most successful in de-escalating my clients when I use the arts as intervention.

In Trauma-Informed Education Trainings, the feedback that I most consistently receive is that trainees (usually teachers and school staff at our partnering sites) want more interventions to use with the children they work with. What they fail to realize is that tone of voice, body posture, facial expression, a "Hello, welcome back!", and a smile are often powerful interventions, just as buddy lunches, Check-In Check-Out, and behavior contracts are. The most subtle interventions are often more useful, as they're most simple ways to build relationship and express "I unconditionally care for you" over time.

Nonetheless, as great of a relationship we have with a child, as great as our subtle or complex interventions are, our kiddos will still experience overwhelm in our presence at some point in time. As such, we need to have more than a smile and Check-In Check-Out in our toolboxes if we are not only to be effective in de-escalating a child, but also in teaching them adaptive ways to express themselves and get their needs met.

Enter: the arts! Remember your 6-year-old self? Remember what worked well for you? It was probably art, music, imagery, movement, going somewhere in your imagination, sounds, and/or working with clay or play dough that helped you calm down and be able to access your words again. Or perhaps it was building a fort and hiding out there for a while, drawing, burying your hands in sand, running on the playground until you couldn't run anymore, dancing, or singing.

When my clients are struggling to find their words or to even contain their bodies, I relinquish my desire to speak with them and hand them crayons or play dough instead. I often sit close to them and lead them through what we call animal breathing (breathing like a snake, bunny rabbit, elephant, bumblebee, etc.), which often not only calms them, but sometimes leads us to laughter. I often hand them the Feelings Flashcards in my office and ask them to show me what's happening inside, usually finding myself astonished at how many emotions they share using this visual cue that I'd never be able to access or understand just by speaking with them alone.

The arts allow not only for catharsis and calming, but they add depth, understanding, and new perspectives not just for the clinician, but for the client as well. Thus, the arts are tools that we have all around us at any given point to connect, understand one another, deepen self-awareness, and increase the capacity for a more nuanced emotional vocabulary. For our littlest ones, they might not be able to tell you what they're feeling or apologize to someone else for hurt they may have caused, but I bet you they can draw it! And when they do, simply asking them, "Tell me about this" and pointing to an image can lead you both to a new level of understanding that may not otherwise be possible.

Even with teens and adults this mentality is invaluable! When talking cannot express what one feels, what else can be used? Collage, visual arts, sand tray, archetype cards or figures, poetry, sound, drumming, dancing, mirroring, singing, listening to playlists of (fill in the blank emotion) songs, you name it! As an adult, my coping skills are listening to music, writing, running, cooking, and visual arts. What are yours? Might you try one of those with your clients?

So, what will you do the next time words fail you?

Blog post written by:
Danielle Saporta, Clinical Intervention Specialist

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ADDRESSING DISPROPORTIONATE SCHOOL DISCIPLINE FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS IN UE SCHOOLS

3/9/2017

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Racially disproportionate school discipline is a long-standing and far-reaching issue in US education. In 2014, African American students were suspended and expelled at a rate three times greater than their white peers. While a long string of studies and articles have been published describing this reality, very few have been written documenting case studies or effective practices for addressing this disproportionality at schools. In an effort to impact this issue at a local level and to better understand “what works,” UE has initiated pilots this year at two schools to partner with school behavioral teams to identify and address disproportionate discipline practices on their campuses.

This process began with a “deep dive” into schools’ office discipline referral (ODR) data to define the problem of disproportionality more precisely, examining where African American students have been referred, what behaviors they’ve been referred for, and/or what staff have issued the referral. (Interestingly, both schools have chosen to focus on defiant or disruptive behavior in the classroom.) We’ve then led school teams to brainstorm the various causes and reasons that may contribute to this disproportionality—ranging from systemic reasons (such as implicit bias or cultural differences between staff and students) to teacher/student-level reasons (such as teachers’ varying capacity to manage challenging classroom behaviors). After deciding which of these reasons to prioritize, school teams have developed action plans targeting these priority areas—including such steps as developing schoolwide professional developments on disproportionality and implicit bias; conducting a “strengths analysis” to better understand how teachers have successfully produced more equitable discipline referrals; introducing a “cultural lens” around privilege and equity as a meeting norm at all standing school meetings; and running a staff book club on culturally relevant pedagogy.

One lesson we have learned this year is that this work is complex and gradual. Although there are some technical solutions to addressing these issues, it also involves a schoolwide shift in culture and mindset regarding discipline and equity. While we are eager to see if we have impacted the goals identified in these separate workgroups, we also understand that this year is the beginning of a conversation and a body of work that we hope will endure in years to come.

Blog post written by:
Sean Murphy, Assistant Director of Program Assessment and Evaluation

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SCHOOL HIGHLIGHT: Lazear Charter Academy

3/2/2017

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Lazear Charter Academy has taken Unconditional Education to new heights in 2017! The Culture and Climate Team, also known as Culture Club, has expanded to include ALL Lazear staff members. Each staff member is a part of a school climate committee that meets monthly. The 5 committees are School Identity, Student Groups, Parent Engagement, PBIS, and Tier 2 and 3 Services. Each committee has a lead who is a teacher or support staff at Lazear. With multiple powerhouse leaders and the entire school as the engine, Culture Club has made sweeping positive changes at Lazear this year. The School Identity group engaged the student body in selecting new school colors and a new mascot. The PBIS committee uncovered a behavioral referral trend in 1st and 5th graders during recess time and responded by creating a new mentorship program to support students at the tier 2 level. The Student Groups committee created 4 basketball teams (2 boys teams and 2 girls teams), led student council in launching our school store, and started Lazear's first Gay Straight Alliance for middle school students. With so many dramatic improvements in one year, there's nothing this scrappy little school can't achieve!

Blog post written by:
Jonathan Barnett, Unconditional Education Coach

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STAFF GUEST POST: Anti-Bullying Support Groups – A New Approach to an Old Problem

3/2/2017

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Sue Young's article, “How to Create an Anti-Bullying Support Group: Put an End to School Bullying in Just Six Weeks” highlights a different way of approaching bullying on elementary school campuses. In the vein of restorative justice, PBIS, and a general respect for the innate goodness that resides in all of us, this approach to bullying prevention focuses on building community rather than responding to the behavior punitively.

Ms. Young’s approach highlights and rewards acts of friendship. She believes that the limited resources of school staff should be spent on creating the atmosphere that they want to see in their school rather than drawing attention to the behaviors that they want to eliminate. She addresses episodes of bullying by putting together a peer support group to “make the child who’s struggling in school happy once more”. Here’s how it works: A trusted staff person interviews the child that is being bullied to identify the students that should make up the support group. That staff member finds out who is making the child’s school experience difficult, who was around when the child experienced difficulties, and who has been a friend to the child. These students form the peer support group. The trusted staff member meets with the group and asks them to help make the child’s experience at school more enjoyable. The group comes up with their own ideas – the role of staff is to praise and highlight acts of friendship. The staff person schedules separate follow-up meetings with the child experiencing difficulties and the group after a week of implementing the actions identified by the group. Further actions are determined based on the outcomes of the follow-up meetings. Ms. Young is intentional about not using the word bullying – an attempt to take the power out of the word and the action.

Ms. Young piloted her anti-bullying program in 50 elementary schools. 47 of the 50 cases saw a decrease in bullying behavior. In most cases, the bullying behavior stopped immediately. For cases that were more extreme, the program demonstrated success within 6 weeks. If you’re interested in using this strategy to address bullying at your school, please read the full article.

Blog post written by:
Robyn Ganeles, Assistant Director of Clinical Intervention Services

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CLINICAL STRAND UPDATE: Breathe in the Goodness, Breathe out the Stress

3/2/2017

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As a clinical director and supervisor, I often find myself benefiting from the same interventions we are teaching and trying out with students, families and schools. Mindfulness is a great example of the power of a parallel process—when you guide others to take a slow breath in, and hold it, and then to slowly let it out—you, too experience the benefits of slowing down your physiology. And sitting in my car between meetings, when I remember to breathe deeply—I experience an almost instantaneous release. I can shake off the stress or residual logistics of my last meeting, and prepare a clean slate for the next one. Slowing down to breath and reflect is a simple activity, yet it is so easy to forget about this powerful self-care tool.

Bringing mindfulness to schools is nothing new to our All In community—many of us are incorporating some elements of mindfulness into our interventions these days. But just like any habit and routine, it takes practice and sometimes a reminder of the WHY. In Baltimore, several schools are incorporating mindfulness and yoga into their curriculum with wonderful results. The following 6 minute video tells a few of these stories:

Here is a video we also shared a few years ago – mindfulness breath explained from a child’s perspective. Feel free to share!