 Hi, my name is Tracy Tegahame Espinosa and I'm really thrilled that we're going to be able to work together to talk about a new tool using risk and protective factors as an evaluation tool in order to build resiliency. When we're together, we want to examine this idea about how trauma might or might not shape the developing brain. I may have met some of you before, but just in case I wanted to let you know that I teach a course at Harvard called The Neuroscience of Learning. It's an introduction to mind, brain, health, and education in which we approach problems through this transdisciplinary lens of neuroscience and psychology and mental and physical health as well as understanding how to go operationalized in learning and teaching about how humans really function and can reach their potentials in society. The main reason that I'm really, really thrilled to be here and want to thank you once again for this honor is that many of you might know that my family is from Hawaii, my dad grew up in IAEA and basically we came back every single summer and this was really a key part of my upbringing. I really do consider it coming home to be able to be with you, work with you, and as others of you might know, my dad was a public school teacher for 40 years and I think the tools that we're going to talk about together, risk and protective factors are very, very key in understanding the roles that each of you play as an individual, how those human relationships really change what we're able to do with the children and the families we work with. There's an old adage that, you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Well, when we talk about recent years, we often think that it was really COVID, you know, this is the culprit of this disruption in our lives. But what we realize now with a lot of the literature, a lot of the research going on is it's really the conditions under which people lived during the pandemic that made such a difference and you who work with families know that better than anybody. It really put a magnifying glass onto a lot of the social ills that we have had forever and that we will continue to have. So it's not just necessarily an idea of we do one thing during COVID and another thing after COVID, actually no, it's actually that COVID put a magnifying glass on things that are always then have continued to happen. And so this pointed out that families who were doing OK did actually all right during COVID and families who were really kind of broken and needed more support did even worse than we expected. And a lot of that was exacerbated by the isolation that existed and conditions of abuse that might have existed before, which became exacerbated during COVID when people were in such close confinement. But more than anything, we realize that this disruption of the norm, normal things that we did as families, the traditions that we had, how we celebrate, you know, birth and adolescence and marriage and even death, how those things were changed completely by the conditions that we were living in during COVID. And so what I want to explore with you a little bit has to do with the ways that we saw people come out the other and actually stronger. So really, where did resilience come from? And so much of that really hinged on the ways that individuals saw themselves before the pandemic, during the pandemic and how they currently see themselves now. And so much of that identity formation are things that we can actually impact. Sometimes we don't understand our own innate biases about groups that we work with, you know, how can that mother paint her nails when her kid doesn't even have breakfast? Or why is it that the guy's got all this time in his hands? Why doesn't he just get a job? You know, there's some things that we make presumptions about, about conditions and lives, not necessarily with full information. And we, the way we react to those individuals actually changes a whole lot about how they see themselves. So I want to take the time during our work together to look at ways that we can help empower individuals to actually change their own self-identities so that they themselves learn to help themselves. And we do this by beginning to look at ourselves and where our own innate biases might be, inner interactions, but also by leveraging a different kind of a tool. How do you look at life conditions, where a person lives, the type of family that they have, the type of job or work schedules that they might have? How many kids are in their lives? When are those things risk factors and when are those things protective factors? So when we get together, we're going to dive into that. And I'd like your help in doing that. Can you please use the link in this email to send me any questions or conditions or situations that you'd like to dive into? There's a lot going on in the world right now and there's a lot of problems that you are helping people cope with in your daily work. Are there some things that you'd like to do a bigger, deep dive on, especially as it relates to mind, psychology, brain, the neuroscience aspect of information, as well as mental and physical well-being? If they are, please do send me those questions or comments or observations so that we can take the time to dive into that when we're together. I really look forward to seeing you and can't wait to explore these new tools together to ensure that all the children and the families that we work with as well as ourselves and our co-workers can find a way to balance those risk and protective factors in our lives to reach the best quality of life possible. Thanks a lot.