The Longwood Elementary counseling enriched classroom team at HEART held a very successful family fun pizza night at Roundtable Pizza Hayward. One of HEART’s intentions this past school year was to find more time for community building and Family engagement. There was 100% turnout by our families and all of the Longwood team attended. The family feedback shared was that they all had a wonderful time and loved having the chance to connect with other families with shared experiences. The team all shared that it was a great experience to spend time with families having fun outside of the school day. This was such a success that our program has planned a family movie night for all seven of our classrooms to see Inside Out 2 on June 18th. We’re looking forward to continuing these events with our families!

Blog Post By: Leslie Davidson, Clinical Director

Our annual Unconditional Education Student and Client Satisfaction Survey kicked off this Spring to gather unique perspectives, highlights, ideas, and feedback from the youth (8 years-old and above) across all our school-based programs. Our team is always eager to learn more about how we can continue providing services to best support the youth we serve.

The insights the youth in our programs have provided help shape and identify how we can continue to improve our services and supports. With 68% of our student population participating in the client satisfaction survey this year, here are some highlights from the responses:
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• 92% said that Seneca staff appreciate my strengths, talents, and accomplishments.  
• 88% said that Seneca Staff help me to share my ideas about my experiences and who I am.
• 83% said that Seneca Staff care about my culture, values, and beliefs and asks me questions about them.
• 94% said that Seneca Staff believe in me and my ability to achieve my goals.
• 87% said that I have say in choosing my own therapy or behavior goals.
• 78% said that I have met my therapy or behavior goals with the help of Seneca staff.
• 93% said that Seneca staff believe I can do well, even when things are hard.
• 88% said that Seneca staff make time to have fun with me.

​We also heard directly from students about how their lives have changed with Seneca, things that they have learned, and how we can improve our services and support. Our youth voiced key themes of making more school friends and strengthening relationships in life, feeling successful and confident at school, and learning new skills towards developing personal growth. Here are a few direct positive quotes that embodies those themes:

As much as it’s rewarding to hear positive affirmations about how our services are being felt, our team will make sure to acknowledge any areas for growth to continually refine and strengthen the services we provide for all stakeholders. ​

​When it comes to using literacy to celebrate different cultures, John Muir Elementary has the magic touch. This K-5 school located in the lower Haight neighborhood of San Francisco is in their second year of partnership with Seneca. Unconditional Education Coach, Raquel Monge, has stepped in to support Muir's "Read-In" program.

During each cultural celebration month, the school brings in members of that cultural/ethnic group to read a story to each classroom. During Black History month, Raquel shared her perspective on the African diaspora in Latin America and read Michelle Obama: Former First Lady and Role Model by Grace Hansen to a bilingual second grade class.
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Muir celebrates LGBTQ+ Pride month early, and this year, Raquel invited Jonathan Tugbenyoh, Director of School Partnerships, to read Papa, Daddy, and Riley by Seamus Kirst to a bilingual Kindergarten class. Next up, Muir will be a Multicultural Celebration in the month of May. Want to learn more about this innovative way of bringing literacy into cultural celebrations? Reach out to [email protected].

Blog Post By: Jonathan Barnett Tugbenyoh, Director of School Partnerships

Located in Fremont, California, our Walters Middles School CE classroom is part of our longest partnership with the Fremont Unified School District. This classroom is one of our most unique since we get the opportunity to have a Seneca teacher. Our Walters classroom teaches 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students. Most of our students come from our elementary CE classroom in Fremont to ensure a smooth transition into middle school.  

Our amazing teacher Vina Nabor has created a strong community where our students get to be creative with their learning. During this year our students read a couple of plays and had fun choosing a character and changing their voice when reading out loud. For science, the students have had an opportunity to do hands-on projects to help them understand various Science topics.  Being able to learn in a fun creative way has brought back some of the interest and creativity in subjects such as Science and History.
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​Our therapist Shriya and counselors Sam and Melinda are always looking for creative ways to keep our students engaged. They have engaged in activities such as Shark Tank during the long testing days or created their own board game to work on some of those social skills. We are lucky to have the Walters team be part of our Constellation Program! ​

​Our Unconditional Education Partnership at Washington Elementary is built on the foundational values of love, compassion, and joy. We believe that Kindness is a powerful tool for nurturing the well-being of everyone and is a significant step towards empowering our students to be the best versions of themselves.
Kindness week serves as a reminder to everyone in the school community of the importance of treating others with compassion and respect, not just during the designated week but every day. By dedicating specific time and effort to celebrating Kindness, Washington Elementary not only enhances students’ social and emotional development but also strengthens the bonds within the school community. It cultivates a culture where acts of kindness are not just encouraged but celebrated, reinforcing the notion that everyone has a role to play in creating a positive culture and climate.  

​At Washington Elementary school, Kindness week has become a tradition, and every year during the second week in February, the school organizes week-long activities and challenges for students to participate in class and during lunch/recess. Previous projects include making “Kindness Chains”, “Kindness Jars”, “Kindness Bingo”, and reading different books on kindness with discussion prompts. With the goal of bringing the entire school community together, the school organizes an art project that is installed in a common area. This year the art project was for each student to create a “Square on Kindness” with their buddy student sharing either their favorite Kindness quote, a colorful drawing, or sharing what kindness means to them. The squares were all combined to create a giant Kindness poster to display in the library. The culminating art project, the Kindness poster, symbolizes the collective commitment of the school community to uphold and promote kindness, respect, and empathy. Displaying this poster prominently in the library not only serves as a visual reminder of the values espoused by Washington Elementary but also inspires ongoing acts of kindness and reinforces the sense of belonging among students, teachers, and staff. 

​Moreover, by involving students in planning and leading kindness activities, the school empowers them to take ownership of their school culture and climate and become active contributors. This not only boosts their self-esteem but also fosters leadership skills and a sense of responsibility towards others. 

​Overall, Kindness week at Washington Elementary goes beyond just a week-long celebration; it embodies the school’s dedication to nurturing the well-being of its students and fostering a supportive and inclusive learning environment where everyone can thrive. Through initiatives like Kindness week, Washington Elementary is laying the groundwork for a future generation that values empathy, compassion, and kindness in all aspects of life. 

In our work and in our teams, we’ve talked a lot about anti-oppression, we have also realized that the term (although super important in its emphasis on dismantling institutions of unjust power) seemed to be missing something. We have also become interested in liberation and decolonial lenses that look more deeply at the ways that oppression, identity, and power operate in our work.  Granted, there are a lot of ways to look at oppression and how it connects to a larger system of inequality.
 
While oppression focuses on the forces of powers that inhibit things about a person or community, liberation speaks to the possibility of constructive change.  To liberate is to reclaim and reposition in connection with others and the world around them. According to Castro and Afuape (2016) liberation is linked to “the transformative process of ‘conscientization’, in which we are both liberated and liberate, is dialectical, dialogical, relational and co-created. Therefore, no one person does the ‘liberating’. The development of critical consciousnesses is liberatory, as it creates space to reflect; be shaped by and shape the world and see new possibilities as creative ‘actors’ (rather than passive subjects) in our own experience.”
 
One of the fore-thinkers around a more liberational approach to psychotherapy was connected to Ignacio Martin-Baro. Drawing on Liberation Theology’s “preferential option for the poor,” Martin-Baro called on all of psychology—whether social, clinical, or educational—to stand on the side of the oppressed people of Latin America and join with them in the struggle for social justice (Gaztambide 2019). Inspired by Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy, Martin-Baro collaborated with marginalized communities in El Salvador to develop research projects that empowered them to articulate their experience of political dislocation and develop a critical consciousness of how those experiences were related to oppressive power structures. Unfortunately, he was murdered by the government of El Salvador because of his dissident viewpoints and his access to communal power through his religious community.
 
Through his experiences, Martin-Baro developed ideas around how one can engage with Liberation Psychology through the following approaches, which have also been re-interpreted into applications for psychotherapy.  They include:

1. Recovering Historical Memory: Not just our personal narratives but narratives of other generations, of other parts of our culture.
2. De-ideologizing of everyday experience: to reflect on the taken-for-granted assumptions about what counts as normal behavior, how these relate to wider discourses, whose agenda these discourses serve, as well as the effects of these ideas on therapeutic relationship.
3. Conscientization’– critical consciousness, dialogue, and relationship. Knowing where one stands or what values navigate our interactions.
4. Challenging Fatalismo (fatalism) – how do we challenge “it is what it is” states of mind

We invite all of our colleagues to think about how they may utilize some of these approaches in their work with young folks. Let’s start a discussion in our small groups and communities about whether these ideas feel helpful to the work that we do both on an individual and larger ecological scale.
 
Moving into Praxis:

• A video to highlight liberation-based work with trauma around racism, particularly the freeze response that may come up for our clients (below)
• From coping skills to empowerment/resistance skills: We are invited to think about this with our clients, to take some time to reflect on a client and identify what skills they currently use to cope with things, and to go a little further and think about what ways might be they may be able to better advocate for their sense of empowerment or resistance. 
• Check out the works of Taiwo Afuape, Gillian Huges, Daniel Jose Gaztambide, Lara Sheehi, and Jennifer Mullan just to name a few.

 
Thank you for reading, and for the work you do!

​​At Alhambra High School's Counseling Enriched Classroom, we believe that the connections you make and the emotions you feel can shape your behavior and your experience of the world. That's why we work hard to create a culture that values connections, inclusion, and positivity. Here are some of the specific things we do to uphold these values.

• Connection: The entire CEC team gathers daily to eat lunch together in the alternative/lunch classroom with students who choose to stay back from the larger campus or just want to access a comfortable and inviting space to eat their lunch. We open our door and welcome all students from the larger campus including friends/associates of the CEC students, school admin and teachers, and those that are interested in checking out the "Seneca" space (pictured). During this activity staff and students share laughter, stories, and connect on a human level outside of the rigors of a classroom setting.  

 

• Inclusion: We strive to always create an environment where every person, regardless of title, age, or gender, can be themselves. This means valuing the interactions that happen, modeling behaviors that we want and hope to see, using of gender-affirming pronouns or names, and creating an inviting space for self-expression, particularly in our therapy room (Check out the eclectic range of chair styles).

 

• Positivity: This is where we actively lean heavily into our Seneca's Equilibrium practices and training, with emphasis on Chapters 1 and 2 (familiarize yourself... if this statement sounds foreign to you 🙂). The underlying message of "working together" and being "here" for one another is more than just words but practices that we all take in our interactions as a team, in our exchanges with students and school partners, and how we continue to show up in all spaces. 

Our goal is for everyone who encounters the CEC program to have a positive experience and feel like they are part of the Bulldog community so that they may proudly repeat the school’s slogan of “Once a Bulldog, always a Bulldog!” 

​During the 23-24 school year, behavior strand leaders participate in a bi-weekly learning community. This space allows leaders from different programs to gather, share, and learn from one another in a free-flowing manner. This year we have focused our efforts on coaching and supervision. Our main resource is “The Art of Coaching” by Elena Aguilar.  The books states, “The Art of Coaching offers all the tools necessary for professionals who coach educators. It demystifies the process of coaching with easy-to-apply, immediately actionable ideas. Elena Aguilar offers a model for transformational coaching designed for new and veteran coaches, teacher leaders, mentors, principals, and other administrators.” The information below has helped guide my thinking as I support others with their beliefs around behaviors, academics, and the educational system.
 
In chapter 3 of the “Art of Coaching”, the author introduces a framework titled “The Ladder of Inference”. This framework provides a tool to see how our beliefs are formed and why we do what we do.  The “Ladder of Inference” is formed around 7 concepts.
Concept 1: Observable Data and Experiences
Concept 2: Selected Data      
Concept 3: Added Meaning
Concept 4: Assumptions
Concept 5: Conclusions
Concept 6: Beliefs
Concept 7: Actions
 
The role of a coach is to support others with moving through the steps listed above to form their belief system. As leaders,  we must actively explore our beliefs systems, to see transformational and sustained change within our school systems. Finally, “The ladder of Inference is a tool to help us delineate the cognitive steps that lead to our belief system, When we guide clients down the ladder, they can explore other ladders to climb up. This is how we dismantle racist belief systems, or beliefs systems about boys and education, or girls and math, and so on.”-Elena Aguilar