 Good afternoon. I'm Gracie Branch and I will be the moderator for today's session, Partner with Families. This is the third installment in our four-part webinar series, School Community Partnerships for the Whole Child. You can go to the next slide. I currently serve as the Associate Executive Director for Professional Learning at the National Association of Elementary School Principles, better known as NAESP. And our mission is to lead in the advocacy and support for elementary and middle-level principles pre-K through eighth grade. At NAESP, we have done extended work in the realm of early childhood. I'm very excited to be a part of the webinar today, and I'm even more pleased to announce that we will have a new publication coming out this January entitled, Leading Learning Communities, a Principles Guide to Early Learning and the Early Grades Pre-K through Third Grade. Now we'd also like to find out a little bit about our participants today and who you are and what you do. So would you please feel free to introduce yourself using the chat box feature, make sure you put your name, where you're from, and the role that you have. Also, we'd like to encourage you tweeters out there to tweet out today using our hashtag ECE WHOLE CHILD. I'd also like to take this opportunity to introduce our esteemed panelists for today. Next slide. I want to give them an opportunity to tell you about the organizations that they represent before we jump into today's hot topics for discussion. First, I would like to introduce Manny Saibana, who is a program specialist at Sun Service System. Manny, please tell us a little bit about your organization and your role there. Hi, everyone. I'm happy to be here. My name is, uh, yes, Manny, and I am a program specialist for Multnomah County in Portland, Oregon for the Youth and Family Services Division. Um, so over there, I oversee three programs. The first one is early kindergarten transition programs, the parent-teacher home visiting program, and of course our P3 program, which stands for prenatal to third grade. And over 20-something years of serving, you know, youth and family directly out in the community, working in different environments, capacities and settings has led me here to the county. And before I came to the county, I worked for many years for ERCO, which stands for Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization. So I'm really happy to be here. And for folks that don't know what Sun stands for, Sun stands for Schools Uniting Neighborhoods. And I will share a little bit more about that system. So thank you. Thank you, Manny. And our next panelist is BB Otero. BB is president of the Otero Strategy Group. So BB, tell us a little bit about your group. So Otero Strategy Group is a consulting practice. We work primarily on policy issues related to early care and education, health and human services, and immigrant issues. And so we've been providing supports to local community, local jurisdictions, policy makers, as well as advocacy groups. I have a long history of the first running for about 20 years an unprofit organization that included childcare and family support services in the immigrant community in Washington, D.C. I currently also serve as an advisor to a special assistant to the county executive in Montgomery County, Maryland, and have been involved in a lot of the advocacy work around the birth of three as well as the Universal Pre-K in Washington, D.C. And unfortunately, the deputy mayor of Health and Human Services for Washington. Thank you. And next, we can go to the next slide as well. We have Minerva Pardo. Minerva is a family engagement coordinator for the West Valley School District. Minerva, tell us a little bit about your position. Well, my position, as it says, family engagement. I work with mainly Hispanic population, but under my radar, I do so many different things, such as ELL classes for parents or weekly meetings for English-speaking families as well as Spanish-speaking families. I build a lot of community engagement, and I am also the leader on an initiative called Stronger Together, más fuertes juntos, which main goal is to remove systemic barriers. I'm a strong advocate for anti-racist practices. Thank you, Minerva. And then last, but certainly not least, we have Joe Bondahar. Joe is the principal at Sandos Elementary in Omaha, Nebraska. Joe, will you please share about your role as principal for Millard Public Schools? Absolutely. Excited to be here, and along with all the other panelists, I am. I'm at Sandos Elementary, which is in Omaha, Nebraska. We're part of the Millard Public School System, which is just outside of Omaha. It's a suburban district with about 25,000 kids in our district in total. We're very fortunate at Sandos to be part of our superintendent's early childhood plan and partner with the Buffett Early Childhood Institute to implement school as a hub. And I'm in my second year as principal here at Sandos. In the School of Sandos, we serve about 400 kids' birth through grade five. And so really, our commitment is serving not only the children in our school, but all the way at birth, as well as supporting their families. And it's been a really excellent partnership. And excited to kind of share a little bit about that with you today. So today, we'll be framing our discussion around the topic of developing and fostering partnerships with families and the communities in which they live. And all of our panelists, we are so lucky to have them here today because they have a lot of experience with this. We also realize the importance of this because of the child's education. It doesn't just begin and end at the school door. We consider families and their communities as essential partners in the important tasks of promoting the physical, cognitive, and social emotional health and growth of our children. So we are looking at the whole child. Now, we also want to acknowledge today that we realize that we are all living in a heightened state of alert and anxiety that there has been nothing very normal about our world right now. So today, as we focus on the ways that we meet the needs and engage intentionally with families, especially those who have been traditionally marginalized, we want you to know that we are keeping your current reality in mind. So let's go to the next slide. And this leads us to our first question for all of our panelists. Can each of you give a brief overview of the needs of culturally specific groups that you serve and how your organization is currently meeting these needs? And Manny, why don't we start with you? Absolutely. So in terms of our culturally specific needs and our immigrant and refugee community needs, they absolutely need support with navigating systems. You name it, all the systems, school system, healthcare systems, transportation, all the systems that you can think of, they just need that support and accessing these resources from finding where to get extra food and supplies, learning about how even banks work, how to get around in their community with transportation. If they don't drive, they just need all that extra support there. And not only just that, but because these specific groups are very new to family engagement and family engagement activities, just that concept, we absolutely need to be able to provide materials and supplies to these families to have at home so they can support and engage with their children pre-COVID and during COVID with these early learning activities that we're all providing in home. I mean things from crayons and glue and you name it, all those fun things. And most important, they need a person. They need a person. They need a person that can be a liaison, an advocate, a bridge, a connector, someone that can represent them, someone that can communicate with them well, someone who engages in the community and understands and is aware of their community needs. They just need that person because that person is needed to help build relationships and trust with those culturally specific communities. Very important. The communities also need a space and time especially for the parents to be able to gather in a group setting, to connect, to be able to engage in authentic, intimate conversations on topics and issues that are really relevant and important to them and most important for them to be able to talk to each other in their specific language. And within these group settings, it's all about helping them build strong families and supporting each other. And in Multnomah County, P3, the program P3 prenatal third grade does that by the facilities and the coordinators hosting parent cafes. And that's how we do it, very culturally specific cafes. Yes. And one thing that's really connected to that is our families need meals. Food brings people together snacks during a session or playing learning group. They do. They need meals. It's a way for us to show them that we care and are taking care of our community members, but it's also a way for them to come together and connect and share these memories together through food. Another thing that I can think of that our family needs is the opportunity. The opportunity to actually come into a school environment early on way before their children is registered in their school community. An opportunity for them to participate in a playing learn group that is free that is open to families with children ages zero to five to give them the opportunity to connect with one another. But most important an opportunity for them to feel a sense of belonging. Absolutely really important. And then to build that trust and relationship with their school community early on and getting to know their community and also understanding that their school community, their school is a hub for them to go to for resources and connections. So yeah and here in Multnomah County we're able to do that because we have six years ago started a P3 pilot program with our early learning Multnomah hub to start this and P3 was a program that is under the umbrella of our sun service system schools uniting neighborhoods. This is a system that has been in place at Multnomah County for about 20 years now and what it is is a school-based extended day enrichment program for youth and families. We have about 90 schools within our six districts and currently we have 10 P3 coordinators, one at least based in all the districts to provide all those the needs that I'm talking about and P3s are there with along with Sun and working alongside the Sun program and with the Sun program the county contracts out to about six different culturally specific and responsive community organization agencies to provide these services and with that these folks the staff they really reflect the community the communities that they serve to the T from language if not language definitely an awareness and a need of the communities that they serve and that's how we're able to do that and we're going on six years with P3 so really excited hopefully we expand thank you and you mentioned hub and when I heard that word I was thinking about you Joe and what you're doing at Sando's elementary so why don't you take up answer that answer that question that we just talked about absolutely yeah I was picking up on that too I jotted a few things down as well yeah so we are as part of our we really work to be a school as a hub and so to me what that means in our team is that we're identifying ways that our school Sando's really belongs to everyone in the community that it's not our our family's job to transition or change to what we do but really us to adapt to their needs and so as I mentioned before I'm in year two here and the important point that our team has really worked on so far is just how are we getting feedback from our community and so we've been really invested in hearing from the culturally specific groups that attend our school what we've kind of found is that oftentimes there's there's concerns but they're not bringing them to our to our teams and so what that kind of tells us is we're not asking the right questions we're not asking in the right way we're not doing it in a way that's comfortable and welcoming and so that just has led to a lot of reflection for us so one of the things this year that I've been really committed to is redesigning any of the groups that I meet with parent groups to make sure those groups are reflective of our student population so as Manny mentioned that they they have somebody that has influence that they can go to that they feel comfortable with and it helps me develop relationships and understand the different perspectives that we have within our building and that's been a huge a huge thing we're just beginning with that but it's been a really important really important step that we've taken I think beyond that we just are trying to be more open welcoming feedback and informal informal ways one thing that sandos has done pre-covid was we do coffee and donuts on Friday mornings we just kind of open up our foyer and we allow families to come in very simple idea but I think some of our best school improvement initiatives come from those conversations that happen over coffee and juice and donuts in the morning and so we're really missing that right now we've tried to replicate it a little bit with some drop-in zooms and things like that but we're excited to hopefully eventually get back to that I think what that speaks to is we're just trying to trying to be there to listen and make sure they know we're there to support them and you know adapt to whatever needs they have during COVID we just like everybody we've been trying to be as nimble as we possibly can making sure material pickups and deliveries are happening making sure we're getting books to families if they don't have those books making sure we're providing activities and ideas not just saying hey keep your kids reading but actually ideas that come along with that and you know I think there's been a lot of hard things about this path that we've been on now for a while but in some ways I think it really has opened up our school building to our community in a much different way than we would have probably ever done before and it's allowed our families to get a good glimpse of what happens each and every day and they're able to be a little more active and ask very specific questions and develop relationships with teachers in just new ways and so that's been really exciting to see some of our families who maybe weren't engaged prior to this become engaged through this new opportunity this new experience so yeah lots of great thing like I said just kind of constantly trying to be nimble and keep up with the ever-changing world that we live in right now great BB what would you like to add so I would sort of echo and ditto everything that Joe and Manny have said in terms of certainly the years that I spent running community-based programs in the metropolitan area here in Washington the very many the very same things that Joe and Manny said were things that we really tried to incorporate into our programs and make sure that we had lots of parent letter kinds of programming that parents were able to design their own programs that they they were really not just the recipients but also the executors the designers and in many cases providing that opportunity for parents to culturally to become more culturally connected in in their new and for many of the families we worked with recent immigrant families or first generation and so I think the the things that were that were highlighted by the two speakers were really really really important I really like Manny's point about navigating systems that is absolutely one of the the most I think the primary pieces in terms of the work that we do on our parent engagement much of my focus has been community based childcare and and how how community-based childcare supports families and works with families as I moved into the policy work I really became much more I I brought the experience of underground work and and and work that that I did as a as a on the community-based setting and the and COVID has even highlighted some of those even more so the kinds of policy work that we're doing is one really helping folks understand public charge and understand the fear that many of our communities and our immigrant communities have around with public charge of those of you who may not know what that is public charge is a federal regulation that basically does not allow many of our families that are either mixed status or undocumented to receive public services such as food stamps and and tannins and others but there it has created such a level of fear in our communities that parents aren't accessing things that they should be able to access regardless of their status and so that's been a very important piece and an education piece both for providers and for government officials as well as for families themselves so really developing the opportunity for those for them to to to have access to those those kinds of services I think the the what they're letting families know what they're eligible for that if they call if they get free food if they get tested if they get any any of those kinds of services they will not it will not affect their their status of their application um so that's one one example great thank you bb and minerva please weigh in on this gosh this was a difficult decision they have mentioned so many wonderful things now it's hard but uh one of the things and my boss is right here in these group and he mentioned the strengthening families protective factors framework and I have the chance to be a national trainer and I am still participating with the alliance in their work and one of them was translating the work into Spanish and the reason why I was interested in translating the work into Spanish is because when we talk about building protective factors and addressing these needing them in the language they speak makes a huge difference so one of the things that we do and that I implement in my work as family engagement here in West Valley is I embed the protective factors framework in everything we do so one of the basic things and I think that just mentioned that is building trustful connections with our families understanding their background understanding where they come from and understanding their needs and one of the best ways to understand their needs is by asking them a lot of the times we create these wonderful programs and systems and everything and we say oh I think this is what they need now maybe that's not what they need we need to listen what are their needs and one of the ways we do that it's also through community cafes and so I have a community cafe at the end of the school year and I hear from them and I have them talk and they are it's changing ideas and then we harvest and we get all the general ideas they get and then they help me put them being priority okay what is for you number one priority of all of the things that you mentioned and if we think about the cultural responsive teaching on the brain by Hammond she says it's really important to understand that the brain it's a social thing we cannot and right now during COVID times we can see the struggle of not connecting physically with others yes zooms are wonderful right but we meet that personal connection with others and that is affecting the brain so when we're thinking about students that come to a district and they come from different countries or other places and they don't have that sense of belonging and like Brené Brown describes belonging belonging doesn't mean to fit in because if we fit in that means we have to change who we are and what we are in order to be accepted but if we really have that true sense of belonging that means that they are they are receiving us with everything we come with our language our culture our traditions all of the things that we are so it's important to respect culture and we don't need to know it all let's just connect with them maybe a home visit is the best way to build connections with that family I will always remember that time when I had to conduct a home visit of course that was before COVID but I said I went to that home visit and the family was you know kind of like not really open for connections because she had received a lot of calls from school so when I go to that home mom was making tortillas good for me me Mexican they're making tortillas I said you and so she opens the door and I go oh my god are you making tortillas and she smiles yes why oh I love tortillas but I don't know how to make tortillas so we started talking about tortillas and for 20 minutes we just talk about her ability to make those wonderful tortillas she felt connected we built connection we had a bud right there at the end of the school year we had a 504 plan for the student which is what she needed but she was not ready to receive so culture it's important it's important to build connections it's important to respect culture it's important to respect all of our families with all the baggage and all the information they have and let's just remember that everything and all the information we're receiving the environment our brain is receiving it and so but that is a different conversation but let's talk about implicit biases and the way we respond to our families sometimes we respond in a negative way because our implicit biases are reacting and so remember react is not the same as respond and when we react we are building these connections but well that's a little bit of what I do thank you so many great points that you all shared let's go on to our second topic so we know the importance of establishing learning environments and instructional practices that promote student engagement and voice and for young children we know that this means learning through play so let's talk a little bit about connecting play and learns to your families and specifically how you're addressing this in a culturally responsive way and maybe share some insight and how you're doing this in a virtual world Manny do you want to share yes yeah um connecting families to play and learn you know the connections are really strong in Manoma County because we have so many partnerships with our sun service systems and with our community organizations so you know families talk to each other and refer to each other to play and learn and programs and all of our partners our biggest partners the our Manoma County libraries and our student health centers really help to connect in daycares and our child care system really supports and helps to connect families to our school based playing learns that we have within our 10 schools and their school based for families who have children ages zero to five so our p3 coordinators coordinators they host playing playing learn groups twice a week one that is like mainstream and open to anyone and one that is culturally specific to the demographics of their school community that they're serving and so we have you know i'm all named some we have mutinies napali vietnamese russian slavic um african american african spanish uh many many culturally specific um playing learn groups and um what the way that we responsibly hold these playing learn groups is um we kind of adopted a curriculum called the kaleidoscope curriculum that has been established up there in seattle washington and this curriculum is very friendly to you know child care providers our family friends neighbors um in terms of supporting our families in helping them develop skills to get their children school ready and really enhance um their child development and the kaleidoscope curriculum is very flexible and friendly in that not only does it provide parent education and topics and materials in specific languages to our families but what it does it it allows our p3 coordinator coordinators to really have the flexibility to kind of take and and and kind of you know be creative in in the materials and the activities that they want to represent um and work with you know with their families um most important it really allows the parents who are engaged in these activities to be the leaders to be the leaders in the playing learn groups um we're wanting to elevate parent voices at all times it really um helps families to stay connected and really participate in these groups because we are allowing parents to be a part of planning of activities and leading activities such as you know music and movement you know songs reading books in their own specific languages and it's been really amazing and even like hosting and leading arts and crafts projects that are relevant to their culture and so this is really important um within these playing learn groups to be really flexible responsive and really listen and elevate our parents voices when it comes to engagement um and that's kind of like one way one way that that we're doing that um yeah and it's and it's worked out worked out really well and within these playing learn groups you automatically set up family leadership so you end up having a parent leadership group and team within your school community that is culturally specific or multicultural and um it's it's been a really important piece in the p3 schools that we have in the county thank you that's a great example uh baby what about you so i'll um i'll use an example of something i developed many many years ago at the organization at fentanyl which is the organization that i founded and um and worked in for for for many years um which is a bilingual a bilingual organization english and spanish serving the latino and african-american community um we started something called the family book clubs and our family book clubs basically were a way to extend the families whose children may not be enrolled in our child development center it was really geared towards our our immigrant community we have a very large african and latino um immigrant communities in that in that area and what what the book clubs were were basically bringing 12 families together we developed a curriculum um i think it was a 12-week curriculum i believe it is it continues and it and it has evolved tremendously um during the um the 12 weeks they meet once a week um and uh follow this curriculum there is a coach and the coach is usually a parent that's been trained to become a coach um these book clubs are held in the fire station and a police station and a library in the basement of a church so they're not um program specific in terms of the organization it was a way to really develop some of that as mani said some of that parent leadership because obviously you come out of being 12 weeks in a in a um play in a in a book club with your with your child and you may be interested in then helping other parents lead those book clubs the the coach received a hundred books that she or he could distribute in his and her own community giving people giving many of our parents an opportunity to play leadership roles within their community not just within an organization um and it really brought people out who may have been really socially isolated um and i have tons of stories of of women that i met over this period of time who um had no idea how to begin to connect to the community that they were living in um and this the situation for many of our of our immigrant families are so different um and and culturally there's a there there's lots of cultural differences and in many of when we found that the role of women and women being able to get out of the home to do um to sort of participate outside of the of the home or the family structure sometimes is limited and so creating opportunities that are non-threatening that bring a value to the family are always um very very positive and and like i said i have tons of stories of folks who started a family book club members and ended up as pre-k teachers or early childhood teachers in their community and that's what's really powerful about um again something that is very much parent-led and community-led yes very powerful and inspiring um bb do you see that as an idea that people could incorporate that idea virtually absolutely um one of the things that that we are finding in the work that i'm doing in Montgomery County Maryland i keep saying that because mani and i are not in the same Montgomery County um is that uh parent because it requires it doesn't require people traveling i mean i know that they miss the the physical connection that being together in a social environment but we're finding that more parents participate on the virtual um for example in parent meetings and parent um orientations there seems to be greater participation um as we're trying to reopen schools and reopen child development centers and in our area um so i think it's very doable um it requires just a little bit of sophistication from the leadership part and from the coaches to help them really understand how to do that but children are so attuned to the technology that it's really more about the adults being able to be attuned to the technology um so that i think i think it's in a in a covid moment we've had to really pivot a lot of the things that we've done um the the other piece and maybe i i will leave that for another for another one of the questions was our family involvement centers around the county um that have been really really successful but i can talk about those later great minervo what about you in relation to play and learns well this is interesting question at grazy because here in yakma we have so many different groups so many different play and learn groups in in the city the county i think um and here in west valley we before covid we were conducting two of them and the interesting part about play and learn like kaleidoscope play and learn is that they are based on the strength and families protective factor framework so they do consider the social emotional competence of children they can see that the parental resilience concrete supporting terms of need uh social connections is one of the most important components and um so we in the play and learn classes or sessions we want families to feel welcome and the way we think about culture when we're in regards to play and learn sessions is we integrate um cultural themes or probably um cultural displays or toys we had a station i one of my favorite stations was instruments and we had little instruments for children to play with and they were from different cultures you know so i had a little rattle thing that would make cute noise and it was from peru was beautiful or little rattles that are made of hay from mexico or different things that everybody can learn from and that's a good way to build connections and always understand that maybe the way we need to build connections with people coming from different countries is going to be um one of things we need to um bear in mind and be more open for that diversity that they bring and culture and richness they bring to the group but yeah we do have a lot of play and learn groups here in yana thank you and joe absolutely um from the just building perspective um it's great to hear all the other things in the community and things as well but at the building i think um the thing that we talk about a lot is just making sure before we even kind of talk about play and learn is just making sure the building is welcoming um and friendly not just to students who uh traditionally have gone to this building a kindergartner uh or you know third grader for example but making sure that um a family with an infant when they come into the building feels comfortable and welcome and then they're not disturbing um the environment by any means so that's something we really think about a lot just in terms of when they're entering the building um what type of experience are they getting so that if they come to um a play and learn group that they'll come again and i think we've talked about this a little but i think that's so important is getting our families connected to our school prior to them coming to school and preschool and kindergarten um so we really try to offer as many things to our um one and two year olds as we offer to students who are in school here and obviously that has um some barriers to it that we're constantly looking at and trying to identify um but that's something really important when we're looking at these play and learns um we host uh play and learns here at the building uh pre-covid time we would do that in person we hold those in our media center and we have a nice dedicated area that's very friendly very bright and welcoming um and our families who are participating in our home visiting program come and learn along with their child and i think this has been brought up a lot and it's really important is the parent is really encouraged to be the one leading that they're not just coming to get um and they're not coming to just sit they're really getting down on the carpet with um their child and interacting and the home visitor and family facilitator are kind of facilitating on the side um and really providing that encouragement and providing confidence to those families to keep doing the great things that they're that they're doing um along with that so that's really uh targeted more for our families that are in our home visiting program um and so that's a select group that we've kind of identified we also offer story times just for anybody in our community and we allow those kids to check out books um I think it's uh we kind of see school as reserve for just when you come to school and it sits here and we've got all these great resources um that aren't utilized all the time by those that are in our community that will be going here so we try to find ways uh to include them as early on so checking out books reading stories to them and again the focus on that is to help the parents build their confidence to be able to take that back with them when they leave um and then finally just you know in the home visits um that's really the big focus when they're in there is making sure that the parents are using every opportunity um to learn and work with their child and just again reinforcing that um they can do it um and it's okay to be silly it's okay to laugh it's okay to be on the uh floor and doing those things um and just kind of giving them that confidence to do it so lots of really fun opportunities here um to incorporate play thank you joe and I could see that in our q&a box that there were some questions that were populating for this topic and I just wanted to reassure everybody that we are trying to uh leave some time at the end so that we can go through some of the the questions for you all so let's go to our our third topic so we know that families are young children's first and most important teachers and we know that consistently research supports the positive impacts that family engagement and meaningful homeschool relationships have on student achievement so talk a little bit about what your overall approach to family outreach is not just deepening family engagement but truly trying to achieve that family partnership it's kind of like moving beyond just engaging parents but that partnership with families um especially as we've talked about why you've been working with your culturally specific groups so uh Minerva let's start with you oh that sounds great oh so I will continue talking about the protective factors framework and I just embed that framework into the work but I do I honor and we honor and respect culture we honor and respect funds of knowledge and use that also as a starting point and we like to make a huge emphasis on our families to let them know that they have the power so instead of using these word of um empowerment that gives the idea that they don't have the power and that's not true they do have the power so just help them feel uh or build that self-efficacy competencies they need to advocate for themselves and um there is one statement that when I read that I it caught my eye real big because they say that culturally linguistically students feel they are in disadvantage and they say I can't do that because I don't have the language I can't do that because I don't have the same thing so we have to change that mindset and let them know they can do it we have to promote that growth mindset you cannot do that yet but you will so promote that growth mindset is really important thank you what about you Joe moving from just engaging parents to really having those meaningful partnerships yeah I think Minerva hit on a big thing that we're working on is just encouraging them to be advocates and finding reasons we're reducing those barriers that prevent that as I kind of spoke about before when we're not getting feedback not putting that on the families and saying they're not participating but really reflecting ourselves of we're not asking the right questions or we're not doing it in the right way and so being reflective internally before kind of going out and putting that on the on the family so I think that's a huge thing is really helping our families to see that we not only say that Sando's belongs to all families but that's really what we do and that's really what we show and that definitely takes it to another level and something that we're kind of constantly working on you know beyond just the you know the basics of being visible and things our family facilitator does a wonderful job of supporting as a liaison and helping our families become advocates for themselves lots of times they'll bring concerns to her and she does a really nice job of listening to their concern but then helping them to bring that concern to me or to the teacher and I what they see or what I hope they see when that happens is that they have a lot to bring and their experiences are valuable and we value them it's just you know making sure they see that our ears are open and so we need to do a better job of showing that our ears are open so being visible though you know like I mentioned before the coffee and juice and things like that just doing things that kind of makes us maybe a little more approachable than sitting behind a desk or something like that we also are just looking for ways to reduce barriers on ways for families to get involved lots of times families want to be partners but there's different barriers that we're putting up and so things like offering babysitting when we have a you know a parent night or something like that gives them an opportunity to attend and maybe they wouldn't have been able to attend those so just kind of trying to constantly think about and ask we've talked about that too what are those barriers and try to eliminate as many of those as we need and then finally I think one thing that we're really working on is connecting our families to each other finding authentic ways for them to develop a community within our school and just strengthen that entire school community and so you know COVID has provided challenges for that but I think in some ways like people have mentioned in the comments we've really seen an increase in participation in a lot of things because some of the barriers are reduced certainly not all of them but it's really been nice to see our families rely on each other and kind of go through this experience and have somebody to support them and with that we just have a better opportunity that they're going to bring those ideas that they have to us and so we can in turn adapt the things that we're doing to better meet all of their needs great thank you and BB so um I want to touch on something that Joe said and and sort of build on that because he and and I think something that that Minerva said earlier on this idea of reflective some of some of the self-reflection that needs to happen I think that we we do have real disservice to our community as a whole our teaching community our school community as well as overall if we don't pay attention to training and and providing opportunities for our staff to really learn about families and about their values their culture their to to deal with our implicit biases and to understand those we're asking teachers often to have three children from three four five different backgrounds in their classroom and and parent teacher conferences with parents and home visits with families from many different backgrounds I think it's really important that we provide teachers with the tools that they themselves then can can really use in the classroom and in any of their activities with families so I think that that in order to have really strong family partnerships I think we need to make sure that those of us who are in positions of authority and power and and and understand sort of the cultural perspective for that the folks bring to a school or to a formal institution from their own cultures and and sort of how they perceive those organizations and and and making sure that that our our professional staff understand those and our will our will have the training and the opportunity to learn about that I there are a couple of models that that have been spoken about that I think are really I have found in the work that I've done over the years really helpful one is the parent cafes I think the parent cafes have done a really an amazing model in terms of really providing an open-ended environment for parents to come to the table with what their particular needs are not our perspective of what it is that they need I think as I've been said I think the other the other that some of you may be familiar with but if you're not I would I would urge you to look up with Flamboyant does the Flamboyant Foundation has done just an amazing job helping teachers create those linkages with parents by walking through a home visiting program especially at the beginning of the school year I've heard from many teachers how incredibly valuable that is both in child development centers as well is as in K-12 in K-12 studies so that I think has been we have in in in Maryland we have Judy centers that really bring together the early head start and early early head start knowledgeable parents as well as other parents as well as as our families who may be receiving services through our infant toddler program and so those are those are all models that I think are really worth it that folks can really look at and replicate as needed I talked a little bit earlier about our family involvement centers these are sort of one classroom that we've embedded them in a school we've embedded them in government facilities where parents can come sign up and come on a regular basis to have these play and learn types of experiences to maybe meet with the specialists because their child is receiving special services when they may not be able to receive them at home because of overcrowding or or for whatever number of reasons so also providing the kinds of spaces where those those activities can happen when the homes are not when when families don't feel comfortable having them come to their home for for whatever number of reasons I think we always have to be really conscious and I know I've said this but I repeat it every time I speak anywhere is we've got to be really conscious about the the level of fear that has been embedded in our communities over especially over the last few years around accessing anybody anything that looks like it's government or formal institutions and their their ability to feel safe around that that's a great point Manny did you have anything else to add sure I just want to say you know here in Multnomah County within our son's service system and p3 we really focus on like three main approaches and the first one is our strength based approach and and that is what that is about is that that is meeting where families are at that is elevating and working on the strengths and the skills that our families already have and what that also means is you know listening to our families and our parents and allowing our families to be the experts in their own lives really key to the services that we try to provide to our families and then the other approach that we strive for is to be trauma informed historically you know historical trauma being informed of traumas that our communities have faced or may be facing whether it's community or individual and the other approach that we want to strive for is kind of like a holistic approach within our son's service systems we really focus on wraparound services we really try to do our best to support our families not just physically but mentally spiritually and socially emotionally and and and most important relationship building is huge for us in our approach and you know we have a school district here in Multnomah County our biggest school district Portland Public Schools who is doing an amazing job in reevaluating the early learning programs and and trying to build better bridges and working on gaps of transitioning you know our early learning families pre-kate has started to our main schools by by looking at biases working on their own biases and definitely focusing on equity work and minimizing barriers so we're really fortunate and lucky to have me amazing leadership in particular school districts in our county that really really support the approaches that we try to strive for in our community thank you thank you well i know that we want to leave some time for questions so we're going to go past the next slide if you want to go to our question slide and i know that we have had help from new america who's helping us with our tech today collects some questions in our google forms so can you all help me with some of the questions that have been asked today to our panelists i know that i saw one in particular and someone asked in relation to the plan learns and i think this was addressed to you mani but could you talk a little bit about how you select parents to go into those leadership positions absolutely it's not so much a selection it's just trying to embrace all the parents that we have attending and kind of picking up on where they're at and how excited they are and if they're ready to do to do those things and just to give everyone equal opportunity so you'll have parents who are ready so we're watching and we're listening and we definitely throughout time know know who those parents are and they themselves volunteer you know and step up and it's open to anyone and everyone but within their but within their own school-based communities a lot of our sun schools have particular set family leadership teams and and that can be cultivated and include some of our p3 parents you know the parents that don't have their schools registered yet but yet i do know out there in our school communities that a lot of these p3 parents already participating in the bigger family leadership teams that are there at their main school and that is very exciting and i do have to mention this that there has been at least three p3 who are three folks who are p3 quarters now who have been p3 parents and that's kind of like what we strive for you know we just keep on elevating them and they're they're the participants and then now they're they're the coordinators so yeah it's not it's not a mad matter of abc you're it it's um it's building relationships and just listening and watching thank you mani um i know another question that came in through our q&a is how do you give parents the skills um to be more welcoming to families of other cultures you have to stop question because because they're they're really often um some um and i go back to the fact that there are folks who don't even realize that they're not being welcoming right that there is such sort of embedded or implicit bias and and um and there's also fear right and there are um there are certainly notions of um lack of language being lack of culture or lack of understanding or lack of knowledge um and you know for those of us who are immigrants to this country who um uh did not speak the language when we came who our parents didn't speak the language when we came uh it is um it really does take a tremendous amount of work and it has to be very explicit um you can't sort of walk around and you've got to be very explicit and you have to do some of the things that are uncomfortable uh translating your your meetings putting making sure that there's equity around leadership uh ensuring that that um more and more of the work that you do is bilingual trilingual in in whatever way um it's not just about asking the latino parents to bring them food on the food days right because we do that really well latinos do that really well we'll we'll make the the the food it is really much more about about being very explicit to families and to to the rest of the community the the rest of the parent community that um these children these families have the same level of rights and the same level of and and that they have I think it was either mani or minerva who talked about the um the the level of skills and understanding and knowledge base that many of our families bring if we just give them a chance if we just open up the the the space for that there are um there are often many of our families who have incredible experience in their own backgrounds and in their own work but that because they don't speak the language that experience doesn't come through in terms of being able to be assets to that community and to that and and real assets to that learning community beyond making food great I would like to add to what baby just said and I love all what she's just said everything every single piece she said because it's so important to honor our families and to help them feel welcome so that is one step but we also have to create this awareness on our staff right uh and if they are if there is not self-awareness I cannot see what I'm doing so that's another part that we need to do with our school staff and on ourselves right because we might be responding or reacting to certain groups of people in the not engaging way so we have to see what we're doing we there has to be a lot of self-assessments and create these growth personal growth to build better connections and more meaningful connections but maybe hit the nail right there I think um I yeah I totally agree I um I think making sure that as I mentioned before that the leadership groups that I have are representative of the different culture groups in our school I think goes a long way in showing not only them that I value the experiences beyond like BB was saying just bringing food to prevent to participate in the culture night or something like that which is great but I think it shows the rest of our community that there's a lot of experiences that we need to kind of work together on and I saw that question in the chat for me about how we measure those family perceptions and I think to me that's what I'm looking for by building teams that are diverse I have to get to know our families very intimately to get the type of tough feedback that I need to hear to make long lasting changes I think we can send out surveys we can reflect as teams but unless I develop really deep relationships with all members of our community I'm not I'm going to be missing a massive part part of knowledge and experiences that I really need to know and so that's my goal is to make those teams more representative just so that they feel valued and that everybody all sees that as well I would like to add one more thing of you don't mind and and that is the great support that I have for from my superintendent assistant superintendent Peter Finch has been key and the superintendent Mike Brophy has also been really supportive and he shows up every month to a meeting with ours Hispanic families and our families ask questions to him and he's there to listen that was before COVID and even in school closures we meet via Zoom with our families on a monthly basis and they have shared with them thank you thank you Dr. Brophy I'm not invisible anymore you're looking at me and that always brings tears to my eyes because I hate to think a family's feeling invisible so the superintendent has been there every month to listen and then the day after if there are some requests or suggestions the day after he's taking care of business right there so that is I feel lucky thank you for adding that support when we feel supported that just means the world I know to everyone and it's such an important thing to be able to have that feeling and I know that's what we're trying to give the families in our school and community that they are heard I heard that a lot today giving a lot of informal ways for families to be heard and to kind of share their stories and not us guessing at what they need but really listening to them so that we're very purposeful as we respond to those needs so going back to kind of a topic that we skipped to get to some other questions I wanted to ask we all know the challenges of COVID-19 and I think that Bebe put it very eloquently when she said that we have really had to pivot this year in a lot of ways but if you could pull out something that is a positive in partnering with families and people talked a little bit about seeing more families participate virtually but if you could pull out a few more positives that have resulted from from our interactions or our dealing with COVID what would that be I'm just going to open that up to anybody on the panel I would say oh I don't have to go ahead oh sorry I don't have anything proven on this but I I do really think that the opportunity for those parents who can be at home with their children while they're virtually where they're getting school virtually that still happening in many jurisdictions across the country they're getting a much if they have time and are able to get to to sort of more closely watch what's happening in school for their kids it may be introducing parents in some way to school curriculum and school even school culture and and much more opportunity to at least see the teachers which is not something that many of our parents get a lot of chance to do especially if they're working two jobs and they can't get to PTA or they can't get to parent teacher meetings and so on so I think that maybe I mean I don't think I don't know if anybody's measured that yet but I think that there may be some of that but you know you wanted the positives so I'll stop there because I have a lot of negatives well I want to add some positives and that is when we think about an event right we always look at the challenges and we think about child care who's going to be watching the kids while we are providing this information to families well we don't have that challenge right there when we're having virtual meetings with families I'm telling you we have families sometimes making dinner or folding clothes at the same time that they are in in a meeting and that is wonderful for me so before COVID I would probably say oh I had a good information meeting I had 10 parents oh wow excellent well now if I have 10 parents that means that probably not everybody showed up you know what I'm saying so we have more and better engagement definitely virtually because they can be at home sometimes even our ELL classes for adults you see them driving and I tell them hey your eyes on the road okay but if you know the answer you can shout out and mute yourself and give me the answer but something I mean the engagement has been wonderful and yeah we miss the physical you know being in a room with the people but let's look at what's positive out of the whole thing otherwise our mental health is going to pay the price let's look at all the strengths that we have and bring to the table despite the pandemic what about you Joe yeah I think what I think it's exactly what BB was kind of talking about is just opening up our schools to our families in such a new way I've talked to our teachers a lot we kind of have a captive audience right now in our teachers we're in our parents excuse me they're looking for us as they're supporting their child and learning at home as kind of the experts how are they supposed to support their child at home and so we oftentimes you know get frustrated that parents aren't supporting them with reading or math but we stop there and we don't show them how we don't show them what that looks like and with this experience we really can and we always should but we really can open up that classroom in a new way that they can be a little more you know knowledgeable about what their child's experience looks like on a day in and day out basis so our families I think are recognizing the need to look to us and I really talk to our teachers and staff about really capitalizing on this moment to strengthen that partnership that we've worked hard to build all along but we're really relying on it really hard right now thank you so are your teachers um coming back to you with the insights that they're getting from getting to see the homes in some cases there are multiple people in a very small space that they may have not realized are you are you is it is it reciprocal is it by is it happening for your teachers also yeah I think absolutely I think having a better awareness of maybe some of the obstacles and barriers that they are overcoming each day to show up to the zoom on time and things like that and I think we're just being all we're all more adaptive to the ways in which we're meeting the needs so yeah there you know there are a million negatives that we could go on and on but that certainly is a positive that I've seen come out of it is some of our families that just maybe didn't know a way to get connected this kind of forced it upon all of us and they've really taken advantage of that and so I've been really pleased with the commitment and it hasn't been easy that they've shown throughout this I know that I've had principal shared that have schools that maybe are doing morning meetings that parents are invited to the morning meetings and have become a part of that and school assemblies so again parents who may not have been able to participate in some events before now have the opportunity to do that virtually so any last advice before we go on to our last two slides best advice to leave our participants with today I just I just wanted to mention just really quick one positive about this time is just the deeper connections that our school staff and our son staff are having with families a lot of families right now during COVID are in crisis but being able to make those personal phone calls for wellness checks and making sure that they're they're okay before they even show up for a zoom plane learn or you know short snippets of plane learn here and there has been really key really key during this time and one thing I do want to share about plane learn that I did not mention was another way of how we are responsive in is that yes the majority of time it is school base but for our culturally specific families the communities are new to them and so we really want to support and broaden their experiences so our plane learn groups are hosted in many many variety of settings our community rec centers our parks our pools you know out in the zoo and so it's just a really unique way to get them out there in the community and see the resources they have but but also just to be to be flexed so it just broaden more of their experiences out there and and be able to do that through plane learn is is a great way a great way to be more flexible and responsive to their needs and they're really excited about that it's almost like a field trip for them we get to go to the zoo and do plane learn there right I wanted to respond to Erin's question around the the connection between schools and community organizations and in particular in this moment a lot of local governments and states are funneling resources and dollars through their community-based organizations for the primary needs that parents have and so I would urge principals to and and and folks within the schools is to look around the community for those community-based organizations that have those resources whether it's diaper deliveries or because boy diapers have been such a huge issue diapers and food and and mental health and and and primary language resources I think there are a lot of community-based organizations that are available and our have really stepped up their game and they've gotten local funding to do some of that and so I do think there is a there's a lot of opportunity for those partnerships to happen thank you and we're going to go to our last slide I just want to remind our participants that next week we will have the fourth and final webinar in this series lead strategically and continuously improve so please tune in next Thursday December 10th at four eastern time and then our last slide is just a big thank you for all of our panelists tonight thank you for being here your commitment to develop and foster ongoing lasting partnerships with families and their communities is evident and we really appreciate you sharing your expertise with us today