The All-In Leadership Team has committed to reflecting on their personal and professional perpetuation of White Supremacy culture while unlearning and relearning how to dismantle oppressive systems within our program and teams. Through this, we have developed a deeper understanding of what it means to bring equity to the forefront of our work.

Historically, the Behavioral Leadership Team has planned their Professional Learning Community’s scope and sequence for the upcoming school year during the previous summer. This systematic planning consisted of coordinating the facilitation of professional development training with other leaders in our program.

This year, in attempt to build an inclusive environment focused on equity, our Behavior Leadership Team began to dive into dismantling and disrupting White Supremacy culture within our Professional Learning Community. We have applied strategies to shift dynamics of White Supremacy Culture in our work based on Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun’s 15 Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture.
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The Behavioral Team acknowledges both the spoken and unspoken norms that exist within our strand, and we are working on a collaborative approach that will push us forward, shifting:  

White dominant culture has been adopted by many of us through spoken and unspoken norms. Both have contributed to my personal social identity and how I navigate spaces as a Black woman. To increase the eradication of White Supremacy Culture, the Behavioral Strand continues to attend and encourage others to attend development opportunities facilitated by BIPOC people.
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Here are a few resources that I have enjoyed reading. Take a look and leave a comment if you’ve read any, or plan on reading any in the future:  

• By Marc Brackett: Permission to Feel
• By Resmaa Menakem: My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
• By Bettina Love: We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom
• By Ibram Kendi: Stamped from the Beginning: The definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

Seneca launched a new partnership with Malcolm X Academy, an SFUSD elementary school, in the midst of a pandemic; and despite the fact that the team is redefining elementary school for this virtual age, they have also hit the ground running in their MTSS implementation. Here are two examples of how this small but mighty school is taking the tiers online...

Virtual School Store
​With a renewed focus on their Class Dojo system, teachers have been shelling out points to students for showing up to class on time, presenting with the required materials, keeping their camera on and mics muted, and participating in class discussion. In just one week, Malcolm X teachers awarded a whopping 3600 points to students across the school. Wowza! But what do students do with those precious little points anyway, you ask? That's where the new and improved Virtual School Store comes into play. Each week, students select from an updated virtual menu. Using their Dojo points, they can preorder snappy school supplies, fidget tools, and cool Warriors gear. There is a weekly pickup time where kids and families swing by campus to collect their purchases. This also creates an opportunity for in-person connection between families and school staff, and it's all centered around celebrating positive behaviors. Way to go, Malcolm X!

​Strengths-Based Socio-Emotional Screener
Along with a few other schools in the All-In SF family, Malcolm X is part of a small pilot this year. Our Strategic Initiatives Team designed a strengths-based version of our Socio-Emotional Screener adapted for the virtual classroom. Teachers took 15-20 minutes to rate their students across ten strength areas, including positive interactions with peers, positive or stable mood, and developmentally appropriate organizational skills. This data is then aggregated into a fancy Tableau report, which enables the school team to analyze socio-emotional skills across grade levels, individual classrooms, and the entire student body. Starting next week, Malcolm X will engage in the "Classroom SST process." In these meetings, our fabulous UE Coach, Marianne Clark, and the school social worker will meet with each teacher to review their classroom data. From these meetings, teachers can identify themes to be addressed in their socio-emotional learning lessons and identify students to refer to CCT (an SFUSD process that is similar to COST). The data will also be taken to the School Climate Team to identify tier 1 goals and interventions. We cannot wait to see all of the fantastic supports that are put in place as a result of this work.

Unconditional Education is about partnering with schools to create innovative programs that serve high-needs students in effective, inclusive, and individualized ways.  It’s about disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline whereby students are pushed out of “mainstream”/general education spaces and into more restrictive settings, or where students internalize a sense of hopelessness regarding their ability to succeed academically and leave school altogether. It is providing more and more opportunities for students to be integrated into their greater school communities instead of being segregated, “othered,” marginalized, or left behind.  It is working intentionally to undo the biases that drive and perpetuate the enormous gaps in educational opportunities and achievement that exist in our country’s schools across identity groups.

One of my favorite parts of this work is starting new school partnerships where we co-create programs and supports that operationalize those ambitions and intentions.  This year our program is grateful to have that opportunity to co-create with the school leaders and staff of KIPP Bridge Rising in West Oakland.  This is a school community that holds their location with pride, near DeFramery Park (aka Lil Bobby Hutton Memorial Park), where the Black Panther Party so often gathered to organize, innovate, and envision during their era.

Student supports and programs in the fall of 2020 are, of course, unique and distinct from any other chapter of history.  Now more than ever school communities must take a holistic view in supporting students and families.  In our KIPP Bridge Rising partnership, Clinical Intervention Specialist Makalah Fleming-McElroy is emphasizing the importance of considering the hierarchy of needs as we design supports and interventions for students and families.  Across our Bay Area partnerships, we’re committed to expanding the range of our services as much as possible in this uniquely challenging time, to increase vital case management services and resource support to families experiencing food insecurity, housing instability, lack of access to technology, and challenges with other foundational basic needs.  With resonance and respect to the Ten Point Platform of the Black Panther Party (as relevant in 2020 as it was when Huey Newton and Bobby Seale wrote it in 1966), we’re working to braid together the threads of physical, economic, and emotional wellness - all of which are required in order for academic engagement and success to occur.

Name: Makalah Fleming-McElroy
Position: Clinical Intervention Specialist, KIPP Bridge Rising
What led you to your current position? Ever since I can remember, I knew that I was put on this earth to change the world. Through a compilation of personal experiences that consisted of both challenges and triumphs, I have learned exactly how I can do just that! I am driven by this passion and know that it is my duty to fulfill it, ensuring to constantly plug in to make sure that the work I do is always a reflection of that.
On top of having the opportunity to teach little brown children their worth, how to better understand themselves, and how their experiences can build towards meaningful outcomes/solutions, I get to teach pivotal adults in their lives to do the same which feels like a dream come true… I literally get to do my “heart work” every day.
What inspires you to do this work? Knowing the beauty and limitlessness of unconditional love, work, and care. Being a little black girl, now 25-year-old woman, from East Oakland California, understanding the beauty and struggle of that experience and position. The realization that the intentional, unconditional love that I received despite circumstance is the direct force which helped me transcend barriers has pushed me to want to introduce this possibility and be that person for other children, especially those of color within this community. That then, they may see, know and understand just how valuable and limitless they are despite the constraints that the world and sometimes even their own communities/families have both knowingly and unknowingly put on them.
What is an important lesson you’ve learned in this role? One huge lesson I have learned and pivotal reminder for me within this work is the importance of authenticity and learning to bring yourself fully, wholly and unapologetically to the table for discussions with parents, children, teachers, leaders and other collaborators. Although the knowledge I learned in undergrad and the achievement of my Master’s degree is key …. My personal experience, outlook, realness and twist to it all is therapeutic within itself too and is something I must never doubt. I have found the most substantial healing-- for myself and the little lives I touch comes when I show up in that way.
These children and families already have the tools within themselves for healing and success… it is just my duty to help them uncover it, see what’s possible and keep as well as utilize their unique vision for their lives as the propelling force and source.
Share your life motto or something unique about yourself: I strive to live every day in authentic power-- when your personality comes to serve the very essence of your soul, you will know power, “authentic power”.

​Recently, I have found myself struggling to find the words to describe what I am feeling in my body and heart as I move along my work week. The effects of the complex trauma present in our local, state, and national communities is bubbling up within me and it can feel like it is everywhere I look. It can be overwhelming and, at times, paralyzing. Stopping me in my tracks, distracting me from what I’m trying to focus on.  In any given moment I can find myself moving between feeling angry, sad, distracted, and joyful. 

This experience is not one I am alone in. That, I know.  When I think about it, this is an experience my ancestors knew all too well.  In many ways, it was and still is a story of pain, state sanctioned violence, discrimination, and resilience. Stories they passed onto me through generations.  These stories are alive in my body even though my mind is not always conscious of them. It is this knowledge and understanding that I try to stay connected to as much as I can. Resilience and practices of healing are something my body knows. For us, tending to wellness has not been a convenient choice but something needed in order to survive. I know the choices I make now impact the legacy of harm or healing I will eventually leave with this world.​

I think often about the various needs we all have when it comes to healing. Today, I looked to art to help me along my day. Political art has a history in justice movements to heal, protest and resist.  The presence of political art and expression of culture is necessary in any healing centered community. The song “A Long Time Coming” by Las Cafeteras spoke to me and helped me move through what was in my body.  Today, I choose to sing and dance to resist.

​What are you doing during these times to help you connect with your sense of resiliency? What are you doing to tend to your healing both personally and in community with others?

​Community Day School (CDS) is a small, intimate alternative education campus nestled in the Oakland hills. The usual serene environment, combined with smaller class sizes and a variety of staff supports, help students to focus on achieving individualized behavioral and academic goals, and prepare to be readmitted to general education campuses. This fall has looked a little differently amid the pandemic, and the resulting distance learning platform. Despite the challenges of working remotely, our students and staff have not missed a beat. The staff have found innovative ways to implement our behavioral phase system, including an online store once a month, where eligible students are able to “shop” in a breakout room on Zoom using the points they earn during the school day. The staff then deliver the items to the students and use the time as a chance for a socially distanced check in with the students.

One of the strengths of CDS is the staffs’ ability to create a nurturing environment for our students and engage them in the process of developing a strong sense of community. CDS is the expulsion campus for Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) and students are referred through the Disciplinary Hearing Process (DHP), when they have been expelled from their home school campus.  The ultimate goal for all students is to work on their individualized goals and be readmitted to a mainstream campus. Despite the challenges our students & staff are currently facing, the CDS administration is recommending 6 of the 18 students for readmission this December, with the possibility of that number increasing to 8 students.  This is a huge testament to the dedication of the students & staff to maximize learning potential amid a global pandemic.