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​Please scroll down to read our Unconditional Education blog posts.

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OUR UE MODEL AND SERVICES

STAFF HIGHLIGHT: Sarah Percy

11/28/2022

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Name: Sarah Percy
Position: Clinical Intervention Specialist 
What led you to your current position? I started at Seneca 6 years ago as a Mental Health Counselor at Catalyst and was always drawn to the clinical piece of the work. I learned so much working in a Non Public School (NPS), including the difference that resources and early intervention can make for kids. I wanted to be a therapist and provide services to kids at the mainstream school level so that they don't reach the point of needing to go to an NPS or other more restrictive environment. 
What inspires you to do this work? ​I grew up in Oakland and attended Oakland public schools my whole life, so it feels meaningful for me to now be a clinician within the school system that I attended. As a student growing up and now a staff member in schools for many years, I have seen too many kids who have learned to believe that they are not good enough because they don't have what they need to be successful in schools.  I see my role as helping to empower kids to figure out what they need and what works for them so that they feel confident, capable and loved in their school environments.
What is a recent highlight you’ve experienced in the work or an important lesson you’ve learned in this role? ​I have a client who I have been working with for the past 3 years whose progress has been amazing to see. In the past when triggered, she had a hard time managing her feelings safely. This year, we have seen her use her skills to self-regulate and maintain a safe body through each and every triggering situation that she has experienced. It has been such an honor to see her growth and also the pride that she has in herself. ​​
Share your life motto or something unique about yourself: I don't have a life motto per say but I always try to remember to be kind to myself and others and to ground myself in the thought that we're all just doing the best that we can. ​

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SCHOOL HIGHLIGHT: John Muir Elementary

11/28/2022

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This year, Unconditional Education West Bay launched a brand new partnership with John Muir Elementary School in San Francisco. With our incredible UE Coach, Raquel Monge, we hit the ground running with several assessments to gather information about the school's cultural strengths and growth areas. While the school is teeming with amazing, skilled adults who love their students and do incredible work with them, there were a few structures and systems needed to harness that energy into effective interventions that move the needle for kids. First, the team came together to create a gorgeous Wellness Center with a defined protocol where children can come to practice coping skills and self-regulate when experiencing strong emotions at school. The room contains centers into which kids can self-select and practice a skill that aligns with their strengths and interests (i.e. art, building, meditation, movement, etc). Next, the team saw a need to support adult wellness on campus, as educators are overwhelmed by elevated student needs in the wake of the pandemic. Raquel teamed up with other leaders on campus to design a series of workshops for staff around wellness, self-care and community-care. Finally, the data illuminated a need around building consistency in staff's responses to behaviors that disrupt learning (i.e. elopement from class, fighting, throwing objects, etc). Raquel worked with the admin team to draft an in-depth behavior response guide and brought it to a larger team for feedback and input. The team is now designing a workshop for staff to train them on the new protocol. With so many innovative approaches happening in the first 3 months of this partnership, we cannot wait to see all that this team accomplishes this school year. Goooooooo, Team Muir!
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Blog Post Written By: Jonathan Barnette Tugbenyoh, Director of School Partnerships

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Our Native American Communities and Resources to Continue the Conversation

11/28/2022

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As November comes to an end and some of us get more into the holiday spirit, I want us to continue to have conversations about our Native American and Native Alaskan communities. For years November is a month many of our classrooms learn about the first Thanksgiving and review some brief facts about Native Americans. Here are some helpful resources and topics that we can use in our classrooms to increase awareness of Native American and Native Alaskan communities. There are over 500 tribes in the U.S that fall into the Native American and Native Alaskan categories. Each tribe is unique and has contributed to the foundation of the land that we currently live in. We constantly see Native Americans represented as one large group of people in our textbooks without acknowledging the impact that each tribe had on the land. Bringing alternative resources into our classroom can help us educate others about the different tribes, customs, rituals, and power dynamics that those before us had. It allows us to present a different point of view from the one most of us found in our textbooks. I hope you use this information to continue to have conversations and celebrate the richness of our Native American community. I also want to acknowledge some of the challenges our Native American communities have and continue to experience due to the ongoing trauma that they have experienced in their own land. I have added some information to spread awareness of some of the challenges that Native American communities face.

This poster that describes the meaning of the first Thanksgiving to the different tribes and their contributions to our agriculture system.
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The Smithsonian's feature on the National Museum of American Indians provides videos and topics to continue the conversations in our classrooms.

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And finally. the non-profit, Native Hope, works to address the injustices done to Native Americans, in part by promoting healing through sharing their stories.

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Blog Post by Mariana Aranda, Assistant Director of School Partnerships

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STAFF HIGHLIGHT: Myila Granberry

11/14/2022

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Name: Myila Granberry
Position: Education Specialist, Sequoia Elementary, K-2 Counseling Enriched Classroom
What led you to your current position? I wanted to come back and teach in Oakland, which is a community that I love. I also wanted to work with younger students and help them build strong academic, social and emotional skills to be successful in the school setting. So, when I saw Sequoia Elementary was looking for a K-2 teacher, I quickly took a risk and applied for the position. 
What inspires you to do this work? I enjoy the art of teaching and feel that all students deserve an equitable education in a loving and structured classroom. 
What is a recent highlight you’ve experienced in the work or an important lesson you’ve learned in this role? This year started off rocky. We were a new team, at a new school, in a new classroom. Despite our rocky start, the students are now making progress. We have recently been invited to join grade level fields trips and we have a student mainstreaming into a reading block.
Share your life motto or something unique about yourself. "Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle."

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SCHOOL HIGHLIGHT: Sequoia Elementary

11/14/2022

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For the past three years, Seneca has partnered with Sequoia Elementary with a full Unconditional Education (UE) team. Sequoia Elementary is located in the lower foothills of Oakland, California and is a TK-5th grade elementary school with 460 students. At Sequoia, Seneca provides services and support to two Counseling Enriched Classrooms (CECs, grades K-2 and 3-5). CECs provide students in special education with educationally-related mental health services in a therapeutic classroom setting. CEC teams work in close partnership with school staff to support students in achieving their individualized academic and social/emotional goals and to integrate into the mainstream classroom and school setting as early and often as possible.  Seneca’s Sequoia CECs are composed of a special education teacher, a therapist, and two mental health counselors. To support the entire school community in their efforts to create healing-centered learning environments, Seneca also provides a UE Coach.

Our partnership expanded this year with the addition of the K-2 classroom. Like with anything new, there were many challenges with getting the school year started. Such factors included a whole new CEC team working together for the first time while simultaneously learning about a new campus, staff, and students. Sequoia also had a new principal starting this school year who was learning about the work that Seneca does through our partnership.  Due to some school closures in OUSD and condensing of CECs, students came from various schools and districts. All our K-2 students are new to the school and each other. 

Seneca staff have worked patiently, consistently, and embodied our values of compassion and unconditional care to ensure our K-2 students' needs are met on campus as well as being included to the larger school-wide community. The presence and collaboration of our staff has been crucial to advocating to meet the needs of each of our K-2 students. Though they were new as a classroom team, they quickly rallied together at the start of the year to set up a warm and welcoming classroom for students to arrive on the first day of school. They established a positive acknowledgement system to reinforce desired behaviors and reward those behaviors in ways that motivates students. They have worked to share with caregivers the classroom systems and daily student outcomes to cultivate safe, trusting relationships. Despite the bumps at the start of the year, they have remained steadfast with their systems and support and remarkable changes have taken place in a few short months.  

One of the highlights of these new changes is that our K-2 CEC teacher is also a Seneca special education teacher.  Myila Granberry (featured in staff highlights) carries a wealth of skills and knowledge to support the implementation of this new classroom on-site. Myila attends grade level professional learning communities to collaborate and build rapport with school staff. The focus of these learning communities is to guide and give teachers a deeper understanding of the needs of our students and to remove the stigma around special education and students in CEC classrooms. It’s only been a few months and grade level teachers are inviting our K-2 students to join them on their field trips!
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With only 3 months into the school year, our Seneca team and Sequoia community are working creatively and collaboratively to strengthen our partnership on campus as well as coming together to create a warm inclusive environment for all!


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​Blog Post by Justina Wu, Assistant Director of School Partnerships for Rooted to Rise in Oakland

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SCHOOL HIGHLIGHT: Oakland Academy of Knowledge (OAK)

11/7/2022

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​Kaycee Hasan supports Oakland Academy of Knowledge (OAK) as one of Seneca’s Unconditional Education Coaches, focused on promoting inclusion and wellness for all community members. At the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year, the principal expressed a desire for Kaycee to support staff wellness, acknowledging that educators at OAK were experiencing the challenging transition back to in-person learning after the pandemic, at the same time the school was experiencing a significant redesign. Since that time Kaycee has consistently shared weekly Wellness Wednesday Emails, that address topics such as self care, self nurturing, gratitude, boundaries and joy, while providing practical tips and tricks and activities for staff to engage in. Below is one example of an email focused on gratitude:
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Today we want to express our gratitude to you all for showing up everyday, putting your best foot forward, and embracing change. This year has brought many changes for each of us in different ways but each of you continue to show perseverance and fortitude. The consistency in how you show up each day, in your classrooms or amongst your students, is what we are most grateful for. We know that it is not always easy. 

We want to invite you all to take a few moments to reflect on what you may be grateful for - specific to your role or the work that you do. If you feel brave, we would like for you to email us back, and let us know the 2-4 things you are grateful for. We would like to put them all together and share them (anonymously) with the campus team. 

Fostering a culture of gratitude is something that we are actively working towards. We hope that with time, as a community we can learn more ways to practice gratitude with each other and with the community we serve. 

The mind-body connection is strong and as such there are physical and emotional benefits of expressing and practicing gratitude.  Gratitude can help to alleviate pain, help improve our health, help us to sleep better, help us to be more mindful of our choices, and help to create long lasting change psychologically (ease depression/anxiety, enhance empathy, enhance relationships). 

Please take a few minutes and share what you may be grateful for. 

Over time, staff have reached out in appreciation, sharing the ways in which the emails have supported them in the work (see a few examples below!). This practice has also served as an invitation for deeper connection with Kaycee (pictured right), helping staff to feel comfortable seeking out her support in addressing challenges that arise in their work with students. Thank you Kaycee Hasan for serving as an example just what is possible when we create space for staff to feel consistently seen, supported, and valued!

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“I just want to take the opportunity to say that I really appreciate getting your wellness emails every Wednesday. For me it is a weekly reminder of how important it is to take care of ourselves in order to serve our students and their families.  I have shared with my colleagues how I enjoy reading your messages and how I like implementing some of your self-care activities in my daily life. Once again GRACIAS for making sure that we feel appreciated, that we matter, and that it is essential to take care of ourselves.” ​
“I really appreciate the Wellness Wednesday emails. The weekly encouragements, affirmations, and reminders always feel like they come at the right time in the week. I appreciate that they are usually brief enough to read when I first see them in my inbox. The reminders to take care of myself come right when I need them, in the middle of the week when I'm so focused on students that I'm often starting to forget to take care of myself. They also remind me that the people I work with are experiencing similar challenges or may also need the same reminders and encouragement that I do. It's fun when there's a reply-all prompts and many people engage.”
“Your Wednesday wellness emails have personally  made me feel seen in this work that I sometimes feel overlooked and could become taxing at times. It provides essential reminders to be gentle with myself and to take care of myself so that I am better able to care for others.  The consistent reminders are helpful in creating a toolbox for myself and students in self-care. I really do appreciate the wellness Wednesday emails.” ​
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Blog Post Written By: Jenny Ventura, Senior Director of Education Innovation

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STAFF HIGHLIGHT: Cristina Sanchez-Cruz

11/7/2022

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Name: Cristina Sanchez-Cruz
Position: Assistant Director of School Partnerships, UE West Bay
What led you to your current position? What leads me to my current position is my desire to grow as a leader, to utilize my voice toward systemic change and to support creating healing centered spaces.
What inspires you to do this work? Within my own adversity, I have learned how valuable it is to create and have a community behind you to support you in times of joy and hardship. My community has helped me to strengthen my voice, given me reassurance that I can overcome the challenges I am faced with and has provided me with so much care when needed. These experiences have inspired me to help build supportive communities for youth, families, and staff because I strongly believe that there is healing and empowerment within community and connection.
What is a recent highlight you’ve experienced in the work or an important lesson you’ve learned in this role? I have learned so much since I started the role in July. However, one that I would like to highlight as Latinx woman and 1st year Assistant Director , is that it is okay to be nervous when trying to take up space, it is okay if my voice shakes, and it is okay if I don’t always know the answer. I am learning and growing and not aiming for perfection, instead aiming to elevate the voices of others and build supportive communities.
Share your life motto or something unique about yourself. Something unique about myself, I love and value creative expression, if it's through arts and crafts, photography, drumming, collaging! I love it all!


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