Blog Archives

Staff Highlight

5/16/2018

Name: Terence Adams
Position: Student Support Assistant

What led you to your current position? The head of tier three operations at my sight recommended Seneca to me and the clinicians onsite saw the work I was doing with the kids and recommended that I apply as well. So I did.

Fun Fact/Quote? This is my first job outside of the automotive field.

What does your average day look like? My day starts with me getting my daughter and myself ready for school and work. I arrive onsite and greet the children as they head to their respective classes. I join the class that my client is in and check in with him. I participate in their morning activities when able. I assist the client and class in any way possible before switching to my other client in a different class. I check in with him and the instructor on how the morning is going and typically take him on a earned break. I then switch back to the first client to support him in the classroom. I then switch to the other client for monitoring during his lunch time. Afterwards I take time to get on the computer, then take lunch. I then join my second client for the rest of the school day.

Why do you do this work? I do this work because a lot of the children we serve are misunderstood by the community and not advocated for. I also grew up in the community that I serve so I understand how hard it is to make it with in the community.

What hope do you have for the future of All-In? I hope they can continue to grow in all directions.

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Valor Collegiate Academies: SEL-Integrated Academics

5/16/2018

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“We exist to empower our diverse community to live inspired purposeful lives.”

This is the purpose statement of Valor Collegiate Academies, a network of free public college preparatory schools in Nashville. Valor opened their first school in 2014 and two of their founders are former Senecan, Darren Dickson, and his brother, Todd Dickson, former educator with Summit Public Schools. Currently with two middle schools, they are set to open up their high school in the Fall of 2018.

Valor has three Core Anchors. Social emotional learning being at the core of their school, rigorous and SEL-integrated academics, and being an inclusive and diverse school community.

Valor places SEL at the core of their model through Compass, a competency-based human development model that serves as a metaphor for growth for all members of the Valor community. Students work towards living inspired, purposeful lives by “Working the Compass” which means growing in body, heart, mind and spirit in the pursuit of excellence. They work the compass by completing phase work, a variety of tasks where students explore their values, develop important scholarly habits and build relationships with peers and adults. They have opportunities to do the phase work throughout the school day, but most importantly they have weekly circle time to work on their personal growth and relationships with others. It is this focus on relationship and community that Valor views as essential to students living inspired purposeful lives. But wait, faculty and staff have phase work and participate in staff circles as well on a weekly basis. For those of you long time Senecans this may sound familiar as circles and phase work are very similar to what was facilitated at the Community Treatment Facilities, group homes, and day treatment locations in the past.

Their rigorous and SEL-integrated academics is based on their goal of being in the Top 1% of growth and achievement in the state of Tennessee. And they are making great strides to those results. In 2017:

Scholars scores were in the top 3% of achievement scores in Tennessee
Valor’s middles schools scored in the top 1% of schools in Tennessee for growth scores
The only middles schools to rank in the top 5 for both growth AND achievement
Valor’s low-income scholars outperformed their middle and upper incomes peers in Nashville and the state of Tennessee, inverting the “achievement gap”

Their commitment to being a diverse and inclusive school is grounded in their belief that in order to be a critical thinker, you must be able to understand diverse perspectives and that begins with being a part of a diverse community. They are a diversity by design school where they seek to have representation in their school community from all over the Nashville area, and allot a certain percentage of enrollment slots to different ethnic/racial backgrounds that are present in the Nashville community. In addition they also seek to be economically diverse and 50% of their enrollment is from students receiving free and reduced lunch. And of course their belief in diversity and inclusion goes beyond demographics. They hold the belief they need to work to ensure all students have a sense of belonging and feel empowered.

They have lots of open source materials on their website. Check out
https://valorcollegiate.org/. Specifically take a look at the Compass tab to see their compass model as well as sample lesson plans that integrate academics and SEL.

Blog Post Written by:
Sara Moses, Assistant Director of Implementation

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Equity in Education: Triumph Academy

5/15/2018

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Equity is at the heart of our Unconditional Education mission and partnerships. We strive to strengthen, bolster, and transform the systems of supports in schools so that all students get what they need to succeed. We also strive to broaden our impact by inspiring policy change on the state-wide and national levels, so innovative and inclusive school solutions get the resources needed for implementation.

We recently had the opportunity to bring members of the California state finance team to Oakland where they toured Triumph Academy and met with staff. It was an opportunity for us to give the guests a chance to see the work and to understand the elements that lead to positive student outcomes and school-wide transformation in our Unconditional Education partnerships.
Triumph’s principal, Jessica Chacon, has participated in the National Equity Project (http://nationalequityproject.org/) for years. Their vision is “Every child in America has the right to a quality education. We support people to make good on that promise.”

In telling the powerful story of her work at Triumph, Jessica shared a realization that occurred to her as a third-year principal looking at her data. “I did not become a principal in this community to disproportionately suspend black boys. But looking at the numbers, I saw that was happening.” Jessica set out to change that by building a sustainable program that could be fully integrated into and aligned with her school culture and community. Tired of the old story where general education and special education programs always fight for limited resources, her goal was to create something transformative.

With input and partnership from Seneca staff over the years, the result is the Behavioral Health Program (BHP) that brings collaborative, integrated services to the kids on campus most in need of support. Students in the BHP benefit from supports tailored to their individual needs. Some of the students have IEPs, some do not. What is common for all of them is the coordinated team approach they benefit from. Every week all staff working with students in the BHP model come together (with school administrators present and participating) to maintain maximum cohesion. As a necessary complement to this high-tier support, the school continues to focus on their Tier 1 practices which include daily morning meetings, twice weekly Toolbox lessons, and Zones of Regulation work in each classroom.

Because the goal of the BHP is helping students internalize and integrate adaptive tools and not to require intensive supports forever, this year we focused on better defining the indicators that students were ready to step down from the BHP. Now when students meet their defined goals, the school hosts a “Progress Party” to celebrate the student’s achievements. In one such recent celebration, the student of honor reflected to Jessica, “Remember last year I was about to be expelled? Now I’m having a Progress Party!”

That type of student pride and celebration captures the heart of our mission for equity. But as important as those individual successes are for students in the BHP program, Jessica points out that the impact is wider than that: “This program didn’t just change things for things for those six kids. It changed the whole school.”

With appreciation to the Seneca staff who’ve been integral in the Triumph partnership: Danielle Saporta, Aaron Burney, Robyn Ganeles, and Kate Sherwood.

Blog Post Written By:
Jason Keppe, Director of School Partnerships

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Staff Highlight

5/3/2018

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Name: John Scott
Position: Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for WA State

What led you to your current position?
My background includes mental health, social justice advocacy, and education. For over 20 years I’ve supported schools, non-profits, and some corporations with diversity, equity, and inclusion work that intentionally integrate all 3 of these components. While working as a clinical intervention specialist with Seneca Washington, I collaborated with educators, staff, and leaders, focusing on topics of equity and inclusion. We co-created several system-wide DEI trainings that provided highly interactive and creative sessions that explored issues of power, privilege, and systemic oppression. These trainings were designed to be both a place for dialogic process and also a space for movement and practicing for positive changes within our system. After creating and facilitating several of these trainings, the overwhelming feedback from our teams was that they wanted more! Seneca Washington invited me to support this deepened process of DEI trainings and engagement by taking on the role of diversity, equity, and inclusion director for Washington state. With the support and passion of our leaders and team members, we have continued this commitment to deepened dialogue and organizational practice related to diversity, equity and inclusion, systematizing and centering the work in way that embodies our core Seneca values.

Fun Fact/Quote
An old psychology professor used to say to us. “What’s in the way, IS the way.” I love this quote because it speaks to my life’s work of supporting individuals and organizations related to DEI work. My experience is that those things, people, topics, etc. we usually try to avoid, are usually the ones we need to directly address, analyze, unpack, and transform.

What does your average day look like?
It’s been a busy year! An average day involves me communicating with other Seneca leaders about new and old ways of supporting our brilliant staff, envisioning and putting into fruition, systems that foster growth and help to create a more gracious space. It also involves designing and facilitating cultural humility trainings that are linked to diversity, equity, and inclusion topics/values with our schools, partners, and organization. If there’s time at the end of the day, you’ll usually find me swimming!

Why do you do this work?
This is a big question! One of the main reasons why I do this work is because I can. I have been lucky and blessed enough to have amazing mentors, teachers, family, who all have held this work at the center of their being and life practice. I understand, on a deepened level, that there were so many who sacrificed everything for my (an many others) right to exist and thrive. These ancestors, teachers, family members, elders, have all instilled in me a passion and love for teaching and integrating this diversity, equity, and inclusion work into everything I do. I also understand, at core level, the urgency that is being felt by many of the communities we serve here at Seneca and beyond. I have committed to utilizing my privilege and systemic power to ally, support, and lift up others who have been and are currently being marginalized by systemic oppression. I love my communities and I love this work and continue to be pleasantly surprised by its capacity to awaken, heal, and transform.

What hope do you have for the future of Unconditional Education?
I hope and believe that Seneca Washington will continue to create and support a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community of clinicians, leaders, counselors, educators. And that we will continue to put our organizational ideals and values into lived, embodied practice, better serving each other and our communities.

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Seneca WA attends Annual WA State Charter Schools' Association Conference

5/3/2018

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This past weekend, a number of Seneca WA staff attended the fourth annual WA State Charter Schools’ Association conference named “Onward: Advancing Excellence and Equity.” John Scott, Seneca WA’s fantastic Director of DEI, and Alex Mehling, our wonderful Lead Clinician and Clinical Supervisor, led a standing-room-only workshop called, “Examining (and Interrupting) the School to Prison Pipeline: Practicing for Revolution and Social Change with (and within) Our Communities.”

This workshop was an abbreviated version of a more involved training that John and Alex provide for schools and other partners focused on understanding more about the school to prison pipeline. It supported participants in having a deepened dialogue about the ‘heart’ of our work and the diverse communities we serve. John and Alex used a culturally humble framework/lens, inviting participants to think about the negative messaging they have personally received related to their gender, class, race, sexual orientation, etc.—this lens was intended to be utilized to view/understand how our systems ‘open the door’ to these interpersonal biases— hence, the school to prison pipeline.

Participants talked through how to identify the dynamics of systemic oppression and how to disrupt them. More specifically, we discussed how charter schools were perpetuating and/or disrupting the School to Prison Pipeline. The session was highly engaging and very well received by all.

To explore this topic, John and Alex strongly recommend watching Ava DuVernay’s film “13th”, which is available to stream on Netflix.

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Staff Highlight

Valor Collegiate Academies: SEL-Integrated Academics

Equity in Education: Triumph Academy

Staff Highlight

Seneca WA attends Annual WA State Charter Schools' Association Conference

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