This poster that describes the meaning of the first Thanksgiving to the different tribes and their contributions to our agriculture system.
Blog Post by Mariana Aranda, Assistant Director of School Partnerships
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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. The Smithsonian's feature on the National Museum of American Indians provides videos and topics to continue the conversations in our classrooms. 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. Blog Post by Mariana Aranda, Assistant Director of School Partnerships
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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: 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! “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.” Blog Post Written By: Jenny Ventura, Senior Director of Education Innovation Welcome to October – the new school year is officially in full swing! Through the start of the year our education teams have been hard at work building and deepening their connections with students and each other as the foundation for the year ahead. There has been incredible joy in the new school year as we settle into what a year of learning that looks more “normal” than anything in recent memory. We have also witnessed deep grief alongside our school partners as gun violence has continued to wrack our school communities both on and off campus including the devastating shootings at the King Estate Campus and the loss of two incredible young people from the Berkeley High community. It is absolutely unacceptable that gun violence incidents like these have become nearly common place. Since 2020 guns have surpassed car crashes as the leading cause of death for children and teenagers and gun related homicides have shown a dramatic uptick during the pandemic. At the center of our education work at Seneca is creating schools where students are safe and cared for so that they can learn and thrive. We will continue to work to be part of the solution and promote policies and practices that reduce the prevalence of firearms in our communities, address the extensive mental health impacts of the pandemic, and increase safety and wellness in and out of school. We have been pleased by the investments put forth by Governor Newsom and the attention being given to the mental health needs young people deserve including:
We have also been proud to work with our partners at the California Alliance of Child and Family Services to support legislation that promotes mental health access and support at school, including most recently the passage of AB 58 which requires LEAs to review and update their policy on pupil suicide prevention, encourages LEAs to provide suicide awareness and prevention training to teachers, and requires the California Department of Education (CDE) to develop and issue resources and guidance to LEAs on how to conduct suicide awareness and prevention training remotely. Sisters Katy Noeli (left) and Heymer Johana Domingo Godinez stand outside their new school, Elmhurst United Middle School, in Oakland on Aug. 30, 2022. (Beth LaBerge/KQED) We know that even small investments can have a big impact. Our school partnership team was able to be a part of telling the story of California’s investments in mental health as KQED shared what this looked liked in one Oakland School. The piece highlights Seneca clinician Yesi Inga at Bridges Academy in this short radio segment and a longer article. As exemplified at Bridges, as we continue through this year we hope that it can be one where we foster safety, authentic connection, and community healing so that schools can be places where all students are welcomed and can thrive. Blog Post Written By: Robin Detterman, Chief Program Officer, Education Services Welcome back to the new school year! I couldn’t be more thrilled to launch into a year of in-person learning after our year of separation. While I know that this transition will be anything but predictable as we implement strict procedures for quarantine in order maintain the health and safety of our communities, it still comes with a great deal of relief that we have entered this year together. Our journey over the past eighteen months has been a tremendous one. I first and foremost want to give a big THANK YOU to all our staff, school partners and families. I want to acknowledge all that we have collectively endured and know that we all have experienced varying levels of loss that, for some of us, was quite profound. I have been humbled to witness the tremendous levels of ingenuity and perseverance across our community. So often, we have needed to call upon one of the most important interventions in our Seneca toolbox – the intentional cultivation of HOPE and persistence even in the face of immense challenge. I also know that in this past year, I have been fueled by the support of our extended Seneca Family and found purpose in our shared commitment to this work for the students and families we serve. If nothing else, this past year has challenged many of our assumptions about education and schools, and we have done some incredible learning together. I hope that as we enter this new year, we can take some of those learnings with us to create schools that truly serve all students.
While we have returned to school, largely in person, the pandemic and its impacts are far from over. To provide healing spaces for students, school professionals need emotionally attuned communities and support in implementing practices that promote personal sustainability. School partner, Kyndal Easter offers these tips for administrators on How to Build Emotional Support for Teachers. In the year ahead, emphasis on wellbeing and connection will be paramount as we build on what we have learned to create schools where all students are truly welcome and can thrive.
Best wishes for a safe and happy launch to the school year and beyond! My name's Emily Dunk and I'm a Behavior Intervention Specialist with the CrossCOST Program in Seattle, WA. But before I tell you more about our program, I'm going to start this blog post the same way many of our program meetings start off - by talking about good food and drinks 😊 Recently I had gone to one of those fancy pants restaurants where they do wine pairings with your order. This was the first time I had been to one and originally, I did not want wine with my dinner because I had not found one before that I truly liked. The waiter asked me if I would be open to trying something and offered to help me figure out which one would be best. They even went as far as to say that I would not be charged for the wine if I did not end up liking it. I agreed, the waiter brought out my pairing, and I LOVED it. It was such a great experience that later that week I went out to dinner again and I very confidently sat down, opened the wine menu, and was ready for another amazing wine experience. The waiter came over and asked what kind of wine I liked and for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what I had with my last meal! I tried to describe it but all I could come up with was "red" and "very tasty." The waiter began to ask questions to see if they could figure it out. They asked what food I was eating with it and more. Was it sweet? What protein did I have? Tannins, full-bodied... Do these words sound familiar? They took the time to work with me and be curious about what I was looking for. We came to a decision and they brought out a delicious red that, once again, went perfectly with my meal. I like to think that CrossCOST is like the waiter in this story. Not knowing where to start in asking for what you need is frustrating. Whether it's about learning vocabulary that is highly specific to other fields or being so close to a problem that it's almost impossible to step back to see solutions, most of us just need a little extra support sometimes. Without the waiter’s patience and curiosity, I would be stuck thinking that there isn’t a wine out there for me, or maybe worse, continue to pay for and order wines that I don't enjoy! We strive to provide that same patience and curiosity to the schools we partner with to consult around behavioral, clinical, and school systems needs to coordinate the right kind of support. A great example of this was when CrossCOST received a request from a school that wanted a school-wide training in Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS). This school faced a number of challenges: high staff turnover, numerous leadership transitions, disproportionately high academic, behavioral, and SEL student needs... all while taking on virtual learning in the middle of a pandemic. Our team leader, Katrina, met with the school’s admin to get a better idea of what they were looking for. With Katrina’s amazing strengths in communication and relationship building, she was able to see the school’s needs extended beyond just training staff in MTSS. Just like our students, when we are escalated or in crisis, it’s not always clear what we need to make things feel better. Acknowledging that the school could really benefit from centering self-care first, and also wanting to meet the initial request, we decided to do both! Our MTSS of Self-Care training not only taught the model of tiered intervention, associated language of MTSS, and the basics of behavioral intervention, but did so through the lens of staff wellness. We provided a framework for thinking about self-care as a tiered model of support, giving tools to each staff member for recognizing their behaviors through their escalation of burnout, and identifying interventions at each tier. Staff reported feeling better equipped to care for themselves, and in doing so, increased their understanding of how to support their students through escalation too. Sometimes it feels like progress comes at the expense of our own wellness. Often, it feels like working to shift systems to be more equitable, inclusive, and healing centered competes with a school’s academic and results-based goals. We're here to flip that narrative. By centering Unconditional Education (UE), we not only help schools meet their goals, but balance offering support with challenging existing systems. This allows us to impact lasting change within our school communities. We like to call this process, “sprinkling the UE fairy dust.” So what is CrossCOST? In formal terms, we are a team of behavioral, clinical, and school-systems minded specialists who coordinate services to support schools with UE as our philosophy of change. And in informal terms, we’re just your friendly neighborhood waiters. So, what’ll it be? A glass of red or white? 😉 Every spring, we reach out parents and caregivers of the students at our schools who are receiving direct services from our amazing All In staff and ask questions aimed at both lifting up our successes and providing feedback on our area of growth. This year, despite all the challenges and barriers faced by parents, students school staff and our teams due to the global pandemic and everyone adopting virtual spaces as the setting of learning and for our services, there is an overwhelming amount to celebrate in the responses. In April, we spoke to 246 parents. These are the percentages compared over the last 3 years of those who agreed with the following statements about the services they received: It is always wonderful to see the year over year growth but it is truly remarkable to see this positivity in response to the work you all did this year, especially given the presenting challenges we all faced. Of course, we wouldn’t know any of this if it wasn’t for the support of All In staff members themselves making the calls and connecting with all these parents and caregivers on our behalf. This year we had an amazing crew of people who offered their time to support this project. Huge thanks to Juliana Batista, Justin Vizinau, Cedric Guillory, Ali Manrique, Ceci Duran, Jessica Ramos, Brenda Larios, and William Chiang for their time and support!! It is no small feat I assure you. The celebrations don’t stop with the numbers though. What parents and caregivers have to say in their own words about out services is also extremely important and informative. In the coming weeks, you will be seeing your school and cluster specific reports and be able to hear both the glowing things parents have to say about you all, and get a chance to review areas of growth offered directly from parents and caregivers. In the meantime, here are a few quotes to wrap up your week your week: “First of all, I want to thank them for offering support. I want to thank the Seneca organization for sending me materials so that my daughter can learn. At this moment, the situation is difficult, and you give me help by giving her materials. Gift boxes arriving and these things last for weeks. My daughter loves this very much. She knows that Seneca sends them, she gets very excited for all the gifts and materials. There are angels in the sky looking out to support us.” March 16th marked the 1-year anniversary of our Education for Change schools’ transition into distance learning. Back then, the thought of returning to in-person school after Spring Break of 2020 was considered possible... However, it is now Spring Break 2021, where we find ourselves on the cusp of returning to schools partially re-opening. The opportunity to reconnect with students, their families and our school colleagues in-person elicits excitement after a year of distance learning. Finding ways to provide play and art therapies virtually; pushing into student’s Zoom classes to provide behavior interventions; striving to connect with students who go video off/mute and communicate through the Chat; parents working while having their children at home, experiencing Zoom fatigue; and redefining boundaries while working from home, are some of the many ways we’ve adapted to working completely different from what we’ve known. Adapting to this setting has been an ongoing process and required much effort, creativity, flexibility, and persistence to support our students while also witnessing the impact of the pandemic on our communities. Within these adaptations we have also found silver linings such as: time saved not commuting; opportunities to take a walk during the workday; more autonomy over daily schedule; the ability to jump on a Zoom call when setting up an in-person meeting would be complicated and being able to work outside of the Bay Area if needed. After a year, we have gotten used to some of these silver linings while also finding ways to connect “good enough” with our students, their families, and colleagues. The excitement of returning to in-person may be counterbalanced by the loss of what we have gotten used to, along with additional questions regarding safety and uncertainty of what re-opening will look like. With so many details getting figured out (which students return, what will the schedules look like, what space will I have, will students have the support they need, is it safe enough, etc.?), this can be overwhelming to hold all at once. As I hear these questions, three thoughts come to mind:
Community Day School (CDS), an alternative program in Oakland Unified School District is the proud home of the Wolverines and is dedicated to using a therapeutic and restorative justice-centered approach to give students a second opportunity to succeed in school. The campus empowers middle and high school students to build upon their strengths by supporting them academically, socially, and emotionally, through individual and small instruction, counseling, and career exploration. As our students face a broad array of challenges in life, we work to help them understand how change is inevitable and how resiliency is a must. Regardless of the change being negative or positive, the Unconditional Education motto is vibrant at Community Day School. District and Seneca staff are working together to re-open campus and provide students with academic/technical support, meals, and a reliable space for them to find success. OUSD has provided each classroom with two air purifiers and personal protective equipment, and requires all members to complete a daily healthy screening before entering the learning hub. Here are just a few images of how our gorgeous campus is gradually transitioning back after a year of disarray. Wow, it's February? How did that happen?!?! That the school year is halfway over is probably just one of the many things that is hard to believe right now. Who would have thought a year ago, when we were reviewing the mid-year feedback from our schools and partners, that the work we do, the lives we live, and the world we know would be so fundamentally different today? This time of year is traditionally used to step back and reflect on how things are going, and given the year we’ve all had, this could not be more important. Our staff have worked tirelessly to collaborate with schools and families to push the bounds of what is possible and redefine how this work is done in the virtual realm. Our UE Mid-Year Survey is conducted through the month of January and helps highlight our successes and, equally important, areas for improvement. These help us to focus our intentions through the end of the year. Despite the challenges of connectedness and engagement during remote learning, we are excited to report participation in our survey held similar to last year’s reports: almost 90% of partner schools (so far) participated in the survey, with over 540 individual responses! The Mid-Year Partnership Survey asks our partners how we are doing with components of the UE Model related to Culture and Climate, Direct Services and Progress Reporting. For students receiving direct services at our school sites, we asked our partners two questions:
This year, both questions averaged above our goal of 80% at 94% and 86% respectively! We are very excited by these positive responses; especially given the challenges this year has presented as both our staff and teachers have had to reinvent the ways that lessons are taught, and how staff-support is provided. There is a lot to celebrate here in the strength, skill, and perseverance of these teams. Data collection and reporting continues to be a program priority this year and is no small task. Teachers, behaviorists, and clinicians have had to rethink how to capture, track and monitor progress data, working closely with students and families to rethink goals and measures that are both applicable to the virtual setting and meaningful as measures of progress. If this wasn't enough, they have also had to contend with the layers of scheduling and technological access barriers in collaborating with entire teams to share the goals being set and the progress being seen. Excitingly this is an area where, at this mid-year point, we saw an increase to 78%, up from 73% last year, and just shy of our goal for the year of at least 80%, which we are hopeful to hit in our End-of-Year Surveys! The numbers themselves, while guiding and celebratory, don't offer the complete picture. We also ask for specific feedback and suggestions on our partnerships. In reviewing the constructive feedback this year, an interesting trend emerged: our partners want more. They want to know more about what the students are working on, they want to know more about how they can continue to collaborate as a team, they want to know more about our services and how we can continue to support staff, students, and families. Here are some pieces of feedback we’ve received from partners: “I would be open to check in with support staff and ways I could support the work Seneca is doing with our students.” While we seek and value constructive feedback, the open-ended responses were overwhelmingly positive, indicating that we are on the right track in our work to build collaborative, meaningful and supportive practices. We look forward to hearing from our partners again during our End-of-Year Partnership Survey. While we wait, here are just a few of the incredible highlights shared from the year so far: “Our [Seneca] counselor shows great energy when teaching a lesson to my students. The positive words he uses on his presentations, motivates students to participate in his class. Kids really like him.” And I could go on and on.............................
When the shelter in place started nearly a year ago, no one thought the pandemic would last this long. Our world quickly shifted to a virtual platform, and staff, students and families were forced to adapt to a new normal. Students were no longer able to attend school in person, and parents were now faced with keeping their children home full-time. In a program where much of our work is relationship-based and include tangible rewards, we were challenged to find creative and supportive ways to support our families. One way the SOAPS Program has been able to support our families is through delivering theme-centered bags. Staff personally delivered Halloween-themed bags in October, winter break bags in December, and now will soon be delivering Valentine’s & Black History Month bags next week. The bags are filled with juice boxes, snacks, board games, crafts, and grocery gift cards. These bags are our attempt to keep some normalcy of the school routine where students may normally have classroom socials before the holiday breaks. In addition to providing some needed resources to the families, staff also have the opportunity for some socially-distance and face-to-face time with the students. Another way SOAPS has supported our families is through providing some basic necessities for students during the pandemic. At the beginning of the school year, staff delivered bags of school supplies to each student to support them with distance learning. Our therapists also created individual therapy boxes for each client to use during their virtual sessions. We have also provided space heaters and other resources when families have been displaced or impacted economically. Although these gestures may not solve all their struggles, they are our way of reminding families that they have not been forgotten and we are here to continue supporting them to the best of our abilities. |
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