This year our Mental Health team at Lighthouse expanded significantly and it’s been an exciting collaboration to watch unfold.   After years of providing therapy services through a county contract for just one Clinical Intervention Specialist (CIS) on the high school side, this year the Seneca team found itself with a new, expanded contract. Our team suddenly went from one to three CIS plus a graduate student intern, as well as two School Psychology interns!!  

We now provide therapy services for students from Kindergarten through 12th grade.  Our expanded Seneca team joins Lighthouse’s own Lead Clinician, Lighthouse’s Clinical Psychologist and 5 Clinical Psychology interns.  I think this is the largest combined counseling support team of any of our All In programs--11 people sharing three therapy spaces, fanning out to support a myriad of students, families and needs in a -dare I say- beautifully coordinated manner. This doesn’t even factor in our Speech and Occupational Therapy providers, who round out our Seneca therapeutic team (between the Lighthouse and Lodestar school campuses) to create quite a crowded office when we all show up at the same time!
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Coordinating this many people takes planning, patience and understanding from everyone involved.  To start, our teams had to get real about how many rooms the school has available for confidential therapy space.  Once this was established, teams set about creating color-coded, individualized calendars that show who will use what room, and when.  Even with this organizational feat completed, I have witnessed team members graciously offering to step out of a shared space to allow for another confidential meeting to occur.  I am consistently charmed by the positive energy and willingness to compromise that each person seems to manifest as these teams get to know each other and we head into the second quarter of the school year.  
 
There is no doubt the students at Lighthouse can feel this level of collaboration and kindness.  When teams work to build trust and show grace to each other, team members are more equipped to meet the needs of the students with a grounded, even presence.  It’s like that airplane-age-old proverb of putting your oxygen mask on first before helping others: the Lighthouse team is bringing so much oxygen!!!  

If you happen to be visiting Seneca Family of Agencies' Center for Training and Education (aka: “The Rock”) and poke your head into classroom #2 (the All-in! hub), you will likely find a number of amazing staff working tirelessly to ensure that students in the Bay and beyond experience Unconditional Education. While many of these staff members are visiting Rock to participate in a professional learning community, supervision, or a collaborative meeting, there are a handful of staff who call classroom #2 their home, including the Unconditional Education Strategic Initiatives Team.

 What is the Unconditional Education Strategic Initiatives Team?

​This team works centrally to support the vision and values of Unconditional Education through efforts to sustain high-quality programs and support growth and scale of the work within California and beyond. Together, the team supports our Unconditional Education program’s implementation, assessment, and story-telling efforts by focusing on three core practices:

Implementation and Adaptive Integration
Articulating what it means and looks like to “do UE” while allowing for the adjustments that will ensure we are responsive to each unique school community.
 
Evaluation and Assessment
Collecting the data and stories we need to improve practice and demonstrate growth and success.
 
Dissemination
Telling our story to all stakeholders including families and partner staff, school leaders, county partners, funders, and policy makers.

Sonya Benavides Assistant Director of Model Implementation
Sonya supports program initiatives focused on articulating the “what” and the “how” of Unconditional Education and partners with program leadership to build capacity for adaptive integration so that our programs are responsive to the individual school context. Sonya is currently leading the ION pilot, in hopes that we can develop and implement a database that is more responsive to the needs of our program. She supports capacity building by training schools in the foundations of UE and supporting them to adapt our practices to their school needs. Sonya is also honored to be participating in the Leading for Equity Fellowship with the National Equity Project to ensure our work continues to be grounded in the value of equity.
 
Jordan Ullman Assistant Director of Assessment and Evaluation
Jordan collaborates with program leadership to design tools and processes that help staff use data to drive their decisions about student services and to tell the stories of the schools, youth, and families they serve. He works behind the scenes with data from across schools, compiling, analyzing, and creating reports that communicate program outcomes and model fidelity on a broader scale.
 
Jenny Ventura- Director of Model Implementation and Assessment
Jenny works to provide leadership and support to the Strategic Initiatives Team and partners with the Executive Director and program directors to ensure that we sustain high-quality programs and strategically scale the Unconditional Education model. She supports the process of securing funding for the work, partnering with external evaluators to formally assess its impact (and hopefully get UE qualified as an evidence-based practice!), and sharing the story of UE with external audiences via conferences, tours, social media, and press opportunities.
 
William Chiang- Unconditional Education Project Manager
William supports all our strategic initiative efforts. From the organization, planning and preparation of strategic tours and events, to supporting project management for our evaluation and assessment practices, William is intricately involved in supporting the smooth functions of the SI team. William also partners with the agency’s Digital Communications Manager to ensure that we have an impactful presence on social media. 

​In our roles and through our focus on implementation, assessment, and story-telling we offer support to the rest of the Unconditional Education family in our collective efforts to meet this year’s program goals:

​#Together : Embedding Ourselves in The School Communities We Support
Focusing on adaptive integration to ensure coherent service delivery for students and efficient processes for staff.
 
#DataTellsAStory : Using Data to Drive Our Decisions and Celebrate Our Successes
Using data in driving our decisions to mitigate unconscious bias and highlight successes that might otherwise be overlooked.
 
#Twofer: Articulating How Our Interventions Can Maximize Our Secondary Impact
Exploring and implementing how we can simultaneously promote prevention/early intervention and build the capacity of others while providing Unconditional Education interventions. 

​Our team is honored to support the work happening every day in our partnership schools. If you have ideas on how we can continue to improve implementation, assessment, and story-telling practices, please feel free to shoot us an email or stop by classroom #2 to share your ideas!

Name: Victoria Eastman
Position: Behavioral Intervention Specialist
What led you to your current position? I have the typical Senecan experiences that is solely unique to work we do. Starting as a Student Support Counselor at a charter school in Tacoma Washington lead to Crisis support Counselor working in partner with all of the charter schools in Washington. It was a whirlwind of learning from great educators and seeing systems that either supported students completely or were barriers to their access to education.  A few months later and change of partnerships, I began my work with Seattle Public Schools to advocate for kids and be a systems changer.
Fun fact/Quote: "We must remember that one determined person can make a significant difference, and that a small group of determined individuals can change the course of history" - Sonia Johnson
What does your average day looks like: Average? What’s average? The key aspects of my day that I truly enjoy is creating a positive space for students to enter where they are loved and belong. I work with students to promote regulations and have greater access to their instruction. I support teachers in giving feedback and validating the work they are doing. I am included in the COST team and PBIS and am successful at being the voice of Unconditional Education.
Why you do this work? I have always wanted to work with youth. As a child with my own IEP, I felt compelled to support kids in a way I needed as a student. I aim to be an advocate and safe, trusted person who can empower youth because they are the future. 

​Since the 2017-2018 school year, Seneca Washington has cultivated an impactful relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary (pK-5th) in Seattle’s Othello neighborhood. As part of Seneca’s expanding partnership with Seattle Public Schools, a Student Support Counselor was placed at the school in Fall of 2017. Starting in the Fall of 2019, Seneca proudly expanded MLK Jr.’s partnership to include a full-time Unconditional Education Coach.

​With an enrollment of about 350 students, MLK Jr. takes seriously it’s responsibility to provide every student with an excellent, holistic education. Martin Luther King Jr. is known a Seattle Public School’s most diverse student body, with students coming from over 20 unique languages and cultures. Over 98% of MLK Jr.’s students are students of color and about 40% are English Language Learners. Martin Luther King Jr. is a school where joy is always in the air, families and community members are active and engaged, and staff care deeply about the students they serve. 

​Seneca’s partnership with MLK Jr. Elementary began with a full-time Student Support Counselor focused on carrying out the reset procedure- helping students who are experiencing behavioral challenges, in the moment, to regulate emotions, reflect, restore relationships, and reintegrate into classrooms. With support from Seneca staff, these Tier II and Tier III behaviors become less frequent and shorter in duration. The reduction in reactive interventions at MLK Jr. provided a powerful opportunity for Seneca- to shift the focus of the partnership to a proactive PBIS-informed approaches (check-in/check-outs, reward systems, behavior plans, etc.) for individual students.

​As the partnership with MLK Jr. continued to grow, Seneca staff became more integral resources in systems-wide changes at the classroom and school-wide level. This shift resulted in Seneca placing MLK Jr.’s first Unconditional Education Coach at the school in August 2019. Martin Luther King Jr.’s UE Coach works in-step with the principal to lead multi-disciplinary, multi-agency teams to identify key areas of growth within the school. In a few short months, the UE Coach has made incredible progress in implementing core parts of the Unconditional Education model; she’s kick-started the school’s Multi-Tiered Systems of Support team, coordinated MLK Jr.’s PBIS implementation, established a Coordination of Services Team referral system, and began coaching individual staff members. Seneca’s partnership with MLK Jr. Elementary is a powerful example of the impact of multi-year partnerships. Through building trust, integrating into MLK’s school community, and developing closely aligned values, Seneca’s partnership continues to increase the achievement of MLK Jr. students by building a climate and culture that is engaging and responsive to all.

Name:  ​Jeraniqua Martin 
Position: Unconditional Education Coach
What led you to your current position? When I saw the Unconditional Education Coach position listed, I was really intrigued with the focus on culture and climate and the Unconditional Education model. I have worked in education for at least 8 years and in my 8 years of experiences, I have yet to come across a model similar to Unconditional Education that truly works for all students. Additionally, I wanted to be apart of an organization that believes in and supports every child.
Fun Fact/Quote? I love traveling and have traveled to 10+ countries.  
What does your average day look like? Typically, I start my day off by greeting students at the front gate with the 6th grade Assistant Principal. From there, I’m checking emails, checking in with students, attending meetings on various topics, supporting during lunch and spending intentional time implementing the Student Support Progress Team (SSPT) with the support of the 6th grade Counselor and 6th grade School Psychologist, 6th grade Assistant Principal and our School Partnership Director.
Why do you do this work? I do this work because I care about the current state of education, I care about students and families and I also believe every child has the potential to succeed when giving the right support and structure. 

​I’m writing this week to introduce Ánimo Legacy Charter Middle School, one of Seneca’s newest school partners and one of our very first in Los Angeles! Ánimo Legacy is one of twenty Green Dot schools in LA and is located in the south LA community of West Athens, serving approximately 1,200 students in 6th through 8th grade. Legacy is hosted on the campus of Los Angeles Unified’s Henry Clay Middle School, which Green Dot assumed control of in 2011 through LAUSD’s Public School Choice initiative, where operators can apply to run one or more of the city’s most persistently low-performing schools. Clay was split into two smaller campuses—Ánimo Western Charter Middle School and Ánimo Phillis Wheatley—before being unified this school year as Ánimo Legacy.
 
Legacy’s partnership with Seneca began when Green Dot toured some of our Bay Area programs back in January of this year. During those tours, Green Dot became especially interested in Seneca’s culture and climate partnerships and the role of the UE Coach. Through a grant from LAUSD’s SELPA, we were able to place a UE Coach at Legacy this school year, Jeraniqua Martin, whose focus is to help develop the new school’s systems for coordination of services and school culture and climate improvements. In addition to Jeraniqua’s role, the grant also funds a series of trainings for Green Dot’s network-wide team of twenty-five school psychologists (led by our very own Sonya Benavides) on best practices for COST and MTSS implementation.
 
At Ánimo Legacy, our partnership this year has focused on building on the school’s existing strengths and systems of support. Among its many strengths, Legacy’s team has built incredibly strong connections with families and the community, with an admin team that strongly prioritizes family involvement in their students’ education. Many teachers have also been with their respective schools since their founding in 2011, which resulted in strong—but different—cultures having developed on each campus. These differences in school cultures have provided something of a challenge as the schools merged, as staff (and families) across both schools had grown accustomed to their own norms, practices, and ways of being. To help support this transition, our work has focused on two priority areas this year. First, Jeraniqua is participating on Legacy’s School Culture Team, whose aim is to build unity and cohesion among staff, students, and families. Second, Jeraniqua is leading Legacy’s new Student Support and Progress Team (SSPT)—our local version of COST—to help develop collaborative systems of support for students, staff, and teachers.
 
Even as these structures continue to take shape, Jeraniqua has wasted no time building relationships across the Legacy community. Only two months into the school year, she has already built quite a following on campus—whether it’s students reaching out in need of someone to talk to, a teacher asking for support with a student or intervention, or a member of the School Culture Team asking for advice about Niqua’s experience leading PBIS, SART, or MTSS initiatives at her previous schools. We are only excited to find more ways to roll these supports out campus-wide as the year continues!

Name: Terence Adams
Position:  I’m currently a Student Support Assistant at Verde K-8 with the All In program.
 
What led you to your current position? The need and responsibility to make a difference in my community is what drove me to this position.  I recognized the need for assistance in the education field and decided that this could be a starting point for me making a difference in the community that I am from.
 
Fun Fact/Quote?  A fun fact about me is that I enjoy cooking and others company. I tend to find the humor in every situation that occurs in my life.
 
What does your average day look like? My average day in my new role at Verde looks like providing tier 1 services to the school and working on school climate and culture through student participation and safety during unstructured times within their schedule.
 
Why do you do this work? I do this work to help the misunderstood become understood. 

There is an age-old question clinicians hear all the time – “What do you DO with the kids in your office?”  A clinician typically takes a gulp and wonders…what AM I doing?  PLAYING?!?!?
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Over the years, I have decidedly used play therapy as the primary model of working with kids in therapy.  Play therapy is tricky to explain, since it can look a lot like simple play.  A client and a therapist can be deep in the throes of a storyline that involves different races of dinosaurs battling each other to the death, spies who turn out to be counterspies (who turn out to be counterspies), and babies who require care but are also very annoying.  Or a client can play Uno for several weeks, always changing the rules so that they win at the very end after a long, drawn out game.  Or a client tells lie after lie, spills toys carelessly, and asks to open every drawer in the therapy office, saying they will never come back for therapy.  Some of this looks like fun, boisterous play and some can be more coy and mischievous acts.

In play therapy, it doesn’t matter so much what the actions may be.  We are playing.  What makes it a therapeutic intervention is how the clinician responds to the client and how the space and time is held intentionally.  I found a straightforward infograph that highlights what the difference is between play therapy and play.  I use this often, in supervisions and as a reminder to myself.

The use of play therapy is based on the belief that the child is processing things through  play.  The idea is that play is never without important meaning, nor is any play by chance or without aim.  Children use play to communicate, think through things, experience new situations, and inform their internal working models – the way they understand the world around them and their place in that world.  The second important aspect of play therapy is the adult relationship.  The experience of having an adult who has suspended judgement, is not moralizing or trying to formally teach, while remaining curious to allow the child to figure things out, control the story, or try different personas is a special interaction in therapy.  If both pieces- free play and a holding adult relationship- are present, play therapy presents limitless ways for kids to experience disconfirming stances.  “Disconfirming stances” are ways that we can support someone to have a new experience of themselves and the world, a chance to shift their internal working model if it’s become stuck or has resulted in unhealthy beliefs and behaviors. These disconfirming stances can be broad – like one client who witnessed severe violence in his family and arrived at the conclusion through play that love does not require you to destroy yourself to prove your love- or it can be very specific like the client who wanted to see different ways of playing games to make and keep friends.
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Play therapy is a fantasy place, where adults don’t have to push an overt agenda, hold to a list of action steps, or make sure to check for understanding from the child. It takes a lot of intention to not take the invitation to focus on how to correct or change a child’s behavior especially with the emphasis on teaching more observable behaviors like classic coping skills.  But the processing of the underlying needs of problematic behaviors is an important aspect of treatment that needs to be addressed for lasting health and strength.  Play therapy offers a space where these underlying needs (questions about what happened to them, what their self-identity is, what the rules of relationships are) can be addressed to support shifts in internal working models that inform our behaviors over time. This is, in essence, the process of changing from within.

In our school partnerships we have an opportunity to use multi-tiered supports as well as multi-leveled clinical interventions to address entrenched problematic behaviors.  In a world that values the effectiveness of CBT and skills based programs, please don’t forget to consider play therapy as an effective intervention that can give a new avenue for our students and clients to play with the prospect of change amidst limitless possibilities.