Community Room Podcast

Welcome back for Episode 8 of Season 2! For 17 episodes we have talked about the magic that happens when we prioritize care and connection in schools, and today we get a chance to hear from those who experienced it first hand. We have two former community school students joining us to share their experiences and thoughts about the community school model and the valuable skills they took away from it. We wanted to speak with them because we believe that supporting kids in these ways, and helping them develop these skills and aptitudes, only increases their ability to flourish academically.

RESOURCES:

https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/competencies


QUOTE:

"No one is born a good citizen; no nation is born a democracy. Rather, both are processes that continue to evolve over a lifetime. Young people must be included from birth. A society that cuts off from its youth severs its lifeline." - Kofi Annan

BIO:

Natasha Rolleston is a second-year student studying in the Faculty of Education at SFU. Throughout her high school experience, she was a member of several clubs and programs including the Artona Ambassador Program, District Student Advisory Council, Mentorship Program, Yearbook Committee, and Youth Action Committee. During her free time, she also volunteered as a Camp Leader at a summer camp in Burnaby and as an assistant to the surgical counsellor at an Ophthalmology office in Vancouver. She works a Program Leader in a large lower mainland city, developing and supporting community programs for all ages. Natasha enjoys baking, photography, and playing video games during her spare time.

Rickesh Mysuria is a fourth-year student studying Computer Science at SFU. In high school, he was a part of Student Government, the Youth Action Committee, and the Mentorship Program. Outside of school, he volunteered with the Indo-African Charitable Society, The Hot Potato Initiative, and also started an afterschool program at the local elementary Community School, called MindBlown with the help of two friends. Currently, he is on co-op as an IT Project Analyst at the BCLDB. He also says he enjoys learning to play the guitar, skateboarding, and being outdoors.

Welcome back to the Community Room! For Episode 7 of Season 2, we sit down with Safe School Specialist Noam Samet talk about restorative justice, how to maintain a safe, caring learning environment in a school and much more. We also touch on how Noam got into this line of work after graduating from SFU with a degree in Criminology, and how he uses his education to support students in his school.

RESOURCES:

Sautner, B. (2001). "The safe and caring schools initiative". Reclaiming Children and Youth, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 197–201.

"Expanding Prison: The Crisis in Crime and Punishment and the Search for Alternatives" by David Cayley
- https://www.amazon.ca/Expanding-Prison-Crisis-Punishment-Alternatives/dp/0887846033

QUOTE:

“Balanced and restorative justice is a new approach to juvenile crime that conceives of crime as an act that not only harms people but also violates relationships in a community. Thus, rather than a retributive approach, in which the state punishes an offender, restorative justice practices emphasize healing of the victim, the offender, and the community.” ― Christopher Peterson, Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

BIO:

Noam realized that he wanted to work with youth at risk when he was in his early 20's as someone who went through the Alternate School stream. Noam's educational background is in Criminology, where his interests revolved around Drug Legislation, Youth in Conflict with the Law, and Restorative Justice. Noam has worked in the non-profit sector for a non-profit organization for 10 years before joining the school district and he feels this was helpful in bringing a different perspective to the school system.

Welcome back for Episode 6 of Season 2! Today we have an inspiring guest, who will help us explore how care, connection and community fits into and impacts high school youth, and also pre-service teachers, in their teacher education programs. We talk about Wendi's work in these programs, her PhD explorations on what it takes to be a teacher and her journey to where she is now working with student teachers.

RESOURCES:

"Find Your Marigold" - https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/marigolds/

The Ember and Stars - https://www.amazon.ca/Embers-Stars-Erazim-Koh%C3%A1k/dp/0226450171/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+embers+and+the+stars&qid=1634608313&sr=8-1

"The earth has music for those who listen" - http://stephanebarthelemy.com/hello-world


QUOTES:

"We must be wide awake, to seek to learn who we are, to articulate our moral positioning, so that we might attend with integrity and care and imagination, those who come amongst us" - Maxine Greene

"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery


BIO:

Wendi Palmer has been a teacher for the past 25 years in BC at the secondary level. She was a department head for 16 years, and also the Mentorship/Family of Schools Coordinator.
Wendi has been a successful and beloved high school basketball coach, and was a varsity player herself at UBC. She has a Masters Degree in Education- focused in experiential learning outdoors.
She is currently a Doctoral Candidate in Philosophy of Education. She has been a Faculty Associate in the Community Schools Module at SFU, as well as a Sessional Instructor in Graduate Programs and Teacher Education Programs. Wendi is also the Program Coordinator of Preservice Professional Studies at SFU, and she is a lover of all dogs, good views and excellent conversations!

Welcome back for Episode 5 of Season 2 of Community Room! It is Canadian Thanksgiving and we have compiled every answer as a special episode for the question we ask every show: "what is your definition of community?" We are extremely thankful every guest we've had come onto our show to share their stories and ideas. We are also extremely grateful for you, the listener, for supporting and listening to our podcast!

Welcome back for Episode 4 of Season 2! For this episode of Community Room, we have a special guest - a New York City native but joining us from Boston is Abe Fernández! Abe currently directs the Children's Aid National Center for Community Schools in New York City. providing on- and off-site coaching, training, and consultation to many community school initiatives across the country. Prior to joining Children’s Aid, Abe was the director of youth services and ran the multiservice Washington Houses Community Center at Union Settlement Association in East Harlem. We talk about some of the differences in approach between NYC and the Lower Mainland, the similarities in philosophical approaches, the Children's Aid Developmental Triangle, the 4 common pillars of Community Schools, and much more!

RESOURCES:

Developmental Triangle (located on page 2) - https://www.nccs.org/sites/default/files/resource/NCCS_BuildingCommunitySchools.pdf

Abel McDaniels Article - https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2018/08/22/454977/building-community-schools-systems/

QUOTE:

“The research is abundantly clear; nothing motivates a child more than when learning is valued by schools and families/community working together in partnership …. These forms of involvement do not happen by accident or even by invitation. They happen by explicit strategic intervention.”
- Michael Fullan, Rethinking Educational Change with Heart and Mind

BONUS QUOTE:

"Vision without action is a daydream; action without a vision is a nightmare" - Japanese Proverb

BIO:

Abe Fernández directs the National Center for Community Schools and guides the place-based collective impact initiatives at Children’s Aid in New York City, leveraging twenty-five years of experience in education, youth development, and the social impact sector. He was previously a senior advisor to South Bronx Rising Together, a cradle-to-career collective impact initiative of which he was a founding co-director. He also led the Empire State Poverty Reduction Initiative – a statewide effort to plan and implement strategies to mitigate poverty – for the Bronx. Abe is a national thought leader on the community school strategy and, with the team at NCCS, provides consultation and training to initiatives around the country and beyond. He is a graduate of Brown
University and the Senior Leaders Program for Nonprofit Professionals at Columbia Business School.

You can reach Abe on Twitter: @abefernandez

Welcome back for Episode 3 of Season 2! Today we have Rick Bloudell and Sandhya Krishna - two community school coordinators in the Lower Mainland - to talk about the different systems and structures that help community schools both in and out of the school! We touch on the foundations of ACEBC, the different people that help keep the ship on course, and so much more! This is a fantastic conversation about the non-obvious entities that shape community schools!

QUOTE:

“One aspect of our fragmentation is the gaps between sectors of our cities and neighborhoods; businesses, schools, social service organizations, churches, government operate mostly in their own worlds. Each piece is working hard on its own purpose, but parallel effort added together does not make a community. Our communities are separated into silos; they are a collection of institutions and programs operating near one another but not overlapping or touching. … The work is to overcome this fragmentation.” ― Peter Block, Community: The Structure of Belonging

BIOS:


Rick Bloudell is a lower mainland city's School District’s Manager of Community Programs and Partnerships. Rick has worked as a Community School Coordinator for nearly 6 years. Prior to that, he worked at Anvil Centre and as a program supervisor and facilitator for the City in the Parks and Recreation department. Rick graduated from Simon Fraser University with a degree in business, specializing in Human Resources, as well as a certificate in Labour Studies.

Sandhya Krishna is a new Community School Coordinator with only one year of experience here in the Lower Mainland. She worked for approximately 10 years in Community and Social Service in Ontario before entering the teaching profession. Sandhya is an experienced classroom, Special Education and English Language teacher with over 20 years of experience both in Ontario and BC. She is excited about her new role as a Coordinator as she knows her many years of personal and professional experience in building community will help her make connections and support many students and families here in BC.

Welcome back to Community Room. This episode focuses on community partnerships as a whole. Community partnerships can enrich the care, education and wellness of our children and their families, even more. When we work together, we are stronger. Many of us cite the phrase “It takes a village to raise a child”, as we believe that together, an involved community can improve safety, increase resources and build skills for all of us. We have with us Iha Hayer, a District Vice Principal for Children and Youth in Care, to chat all about the importance of non-school partnerships for community schools!

QUOTE:

"As the old African proverb says, "It takes a village to raise a child." One could imagine then that it would take a community to raise a school. We can't rely on local, state, or federal governments to take ownership of the issues we face locally. We need to work as a community to nurture our schools for our particular community needs." - Brendan O'Keefe, Edutopia

RESOURCES:

www.safesupportivelearning.ed.gov
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/school-community-collaboration-brendan-okeefe
https://www.ascd.org/

BIO:

Iha is a settler in this country that we now call Canada, and she feels so privileged and honored
to live, learn and work on the traditional unceded territories of the Katzie, Kwantlen, Matsqui
and Semiahmoo First Nations.

Iha would say she is most importantly a mom of a 3.5 year old, a few fake adopted kids that are
all adults now, a dog, and the wife of a supportive husband. She says that her foremost passion is healthy community building.

Iha developed this interest while completing her undergraduate degree at the University of
Victoria where she volunteered with the Victoria Street Kids Association as well as working as a
children’s counselor at the Victoria Women’s Transition House. She decided that she could effect change as a teacher and has taught in several diverse communities including; Quebec City, Quebec; Langley, BC; and Hamilton, Bermuda. In each location she worked with predominantly populations where children and youth experienced barriers to academic and social emotional success. In June 2007 she completed her Masters and became interested in systems thinking and change
management. That year she also developed and piloted the Heroes Live Here program for 2010
Legacies Now. Heroes Live Here was a literacy based, leadership initiative. In 2011, Iha applied for a Community School Coordinator Position in the lower mainland to develop a pilot project of a High School Community School in the district.

She then became a Vice Principal at a Middle School in another lower mainland district and is
now at the School Board Office as a District Vice Principal for Children and Youth in Care. She
now leads the Vulnerable Student Support Team and the development of the Community School
Approach in her district.

We welcome you back for Season 2 of Community Room! As we enter the 2021/2022 school year, we come back with more excellent conversations around community schools and the importance of community! For Episode 1 of Season 2, we have three community school teachers from the Lower Mainland talking about the beginning of the school year, the challenges of teaching during lock-downs, and the different ways they brought community in their schools this past year!


QUOTE:

“As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together.” - Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life

BIOS:

Kim Baker has been an educator in a Burnaby Community School for 16 years. Kim's passion is building classroom communities where kids are made to feel like a family; safe, loved, and included. Her love of community has kept her at her current school for her entire 16 year career, taking several roles during her time there. Kim believes that a school is the heart of the community.

Georgia Clayton is an unwanted settler from Northern English and Irish background. She has worked with teenagers for the past 15 years in different capacities. From youth work to sexual health educator to now a classroom teacher, she believes that this generation of youth has the capacity to create large scale social change. Regardless of the environment, community collaboration and elevating the youth voice has always been a priority in her work. Her current interests are learning how to skateboard and
training her cat to play fetch.

Satpaul Binng has been teaching K-7 in various roles for the past 23 years. She has worked both in community and non-community schools and has her Masters in Curriculum and Instruction. She has a passion for using the 'lens of story' to develop relationships that help her build strong classroom communities.

Welcome back for Episode 10 and final episode of Season 1 on this blistering Sunday! Today, we sit down with current secondary school principal Dave Rawnsley. He led the first Canadian school (a community school) that won the ASCD Vision and Action Whole Child Education Award. We chat with Dave about the Whole Child Education approach - what that means for schools, especially community schools - and the strategies he has found productive and beneficial to students over his years of teaching.

RESOURCES:

- https://acebc.ca/resources/elements-and-threads/
- http://www.ascd.org/whole-child.aspx

QUOTES:

"In 2005 when ASCD decided it was time to reemphasize education for the whole child, some critics wrote that such an aim was "soft and squishy." Their criticism overlooked an essential component of whole child education. Although those who advocate for education for the whole child may not believe that a single "get tough" strategy works, they know that offering students meaningful challenges does. Children - much like adults - learn best when they are engaged, supported, safe, healthy - and, most surely, challenged." - Marge Scherer

Welcome back for Episode 9! We have John Talbot joining us to talk about working in groups. John has over 40 years of experience as an executive, consultant, practitioner and trainer in the public, non-profit and private sectors. He has worked in all regions of British Columbia, Yukon and has done extensive work nationally and internationally using a community development model. We talk about "the Four P's", "The Five I's", strategies for effectively working with groups, and touching on divergent and convergent thinking. Happy Father's Day!

RESOURCES:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_development
- THE FOUR P's = (Purpose, Product, People, Process)
- THE FIVE I's = (Into, Interesting, Informed, Involved, Inspired)
- RAFF = (Relationships, Action, Food & Fun)
- "See No Stranger" - By Valerie Kaur (https://valariekaur.com/see-no-stranger/)


QUOTES:

- "Businesses and other human endeavours are also systems. They, too, are bound by invisible fabrics of interrelated actions, which often take years to fully play out their effects on each other. Since we are part of that lacework ourselves, it's doubly hard to see the whole pattern of change. Instead we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system, and wonder why our deepest problems never seem to get resolved." - Peter Senge

- "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." - Eleanor Roosevelt