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.
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.
Who Are We and What We Do?
(from left to right)
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.
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.
Supporting UE’s Annual Program Goals
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.
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!
Blog Post Written By: Jordan Ullman, Assistant Director of Assessment and Evaluation
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