001good morning everyone and thank you for being here on this curriculum day uh our march curriculum day this year i'm superintendent mike morris i'm just pleased to be here and please for the program that's been designed for everyone i think it'll be enriching engaging and kind of yet another show of our commitment to the critical work we have and meeting the needs of all of our students before we get into the program just wanna i'll speak very briefly this morning just a quick thank you um tim she and doreen cunningham and their teams did a tremendous amount of work organizing the morning program for us this morning uh so i want to extend my appreciations to all the folks who worked on this i also want to thank there's a comment actually in the um
002in the chat i was going to mention anyway i want to thank so many of you for working collaboratively to make vaccine appointments available and accessible for members of the staff i know some people are still working on that but it's a um it's an incredible endeavor that people have taken on and just seeing you know how many people have worked within their staffs within across buildings to support each other in that way has been tremendous so i think it says a lot about you and a lot about the staff that we've seen this level of collaboration with early mornings for early birds and then the night owls staying up till midnight at 12 30 trying to help with that so um you really really appreciate all the work that you're doing um and and
003last before i uh more formally introduce our keynote speaker this morning you know i think this is a time of change i think we're all experiencing that um and one of the things that is consistent regardless of whether in person or remote or any of those other other aspects is that even in times of change our commitment to dei to diversity equity inclusion is consistent it doesn't depend on learning type it doesn't depend on other variables it's who we are as an organization and what we're striving to be as we look for improvement about what our environment is for our faculty and staff what our environment is for students and what are what we believe in as an organization and so with us today to help to help with that and help assist with that
004is kimmy carlos kimmy's the ceo and founder of kimmy carlos motivational consulting the co-founder of the sister wellness retreats healing spaces for black women and the founder of urban mental health excuse me urban mental health alliance advocating for healthy minds in urban communities um so this keynote is uh going to uh kimmy's going to start us off um there will be a time for questions later on in her after her presentation and then we'll have breakout groups uh to continue that work for the rest of the morning uh but thank you so much for being here thank you for your tremendous work for students thank you for how much of yourselves you've shown for students especially in this virtual environment it's opened a lot of doors not just for um you know seeing what's going
005on for families and homes and children but for ourselves as well and i appreciate your openness to that and with that i'm going to bring kimmy carlos onto the stream so kimmy thank you for joining us here in amherst i really appreciate your presence and your presentation and the wisdom you're going to share with us so thank you thank you for being here thank you so much mike good morning good morning i am absolutely delighted to be here and thank you to amherst pelham school district for having me and thank you to all of you that are joining us today i know that there are many other things that you could be doing and i'm excited that you are have me with you for your march curriculum day i am indeed kimmy carlos i'm excited
006to be here in front of you um i want to just share a few things before we actually jump into the presentation so we are going to have an honest authentic conversation today we're going to be talking about racism and we are living in a historic time right now because for the first time in our country we're having authentic transparent conversation around what systemic racism looks like and how that has affected our families and our communities and so i'm excited because i have had several opportunities to talk to school districts about how we can begin to dismantle some of our most oppressive uh infrastructures and systems and begin to start creating life affirming infrastructures for our youth um so with that i want to just share a couple of things i want you to be
007open-minded and i also want you to be comfortable being uncomfortable because we know that this is not an easy conversation it's a necessary conversation and i'm excited that we're having it but it's not an easy conversation right and so this is a safe space what that means is if there's questions that you want to ask i am absolutely open to that now is the time to be able to answer ask and get those questions answered so please feel free to do that right because it's not every day you have a safe space to talk about such a sensitive topic and i want to provide space to do that today so i am going to be in front of you for just about 50 minutes to an hour have a great presentation for you um if
008you haven't already go ahead and get yourself a notepad and a pen or a pencil or get your chromebook if you want to take notes if you need to get something to drink go ahead and do that because i want to make sure you get this information at the end of the presentation i'm going to come back into the virtual room i'm going to open the floor up for questions um that's going to be for about 20-25 minutes and then i'm gonna leave you with a question of my own for you to kind of think through okay so let's get started i'm excited um mike i'm gonna share my screen and if anything doesn't look right just let me know but i think i know what i'm doing application window okay and there we go
009all right so we are here for youth and the trauma of systemic racism and again i am kimmy carlos and my consulting firm is kimmy carlos motivational consulting and again i want to thank you for being here today but i also want to thank you for being an educator in a time that is so not normal right i can only imagine how challenging it's been for our educators in the past year who one year ago this month had to do a sudden pivot right from in classroom learning to remote learning and suddenly try and figure out how you can continue to educate and empower your students in a virtual world that none of us were prepared for so i want to thank you for all the hard work that you've done in addition to thanking
010you again for being here today regardless of what your role is at amherst pelham today your role is change maker and the reason you're a change maker is because you are going to get information today that's going to make you think and it's going to give you the opportunity if you feel so empowered to make change positive change in the lives of your students and their families and your overall community so i want to share a little bit about myself i am a trauma and alcoholism survivor this past november i celebrated 19 years clean and sober um i fell into alcoholism early at an age 14 because of some traumas that i had as a child the biggest trauma being uh i lost my mother to suicide and when i came into recovery after more
011than 20 years in active alcoholism um i became really passionate about mental and emotional wellness and learning how to manage trauma learning how to manage ptsd social anxiety disorder and chronic clinical depression all of which i was suffering from right i went on to publish a book that really shares my journey through alcoholism into recovery and all the strategies that i learned on how to manage my mental and emotional wellness because i made a commitment that i wanted to spend the rest of my life sober i wanted to be a productive role model for my children and i wanted to make sure that i honored my mother by doing the advocacy work so that no other child would ever lose a parent to suicide um so i've gone on to be a motivational speaker i
012do a lot of speaking around mental and emotional wellness and trauma um anti-racism and social justice equity and justice um i am a program designer so i design a lot of different programs and facilitate programs around wellness i'm a wellness and empowerment coach i'm a mental and emotional wellness advocate so i um create space wherever i am so that people feel empowered to learn about managing their mental health and wellness i'm a non-profit founder of the urban mental health alliance i am a certified anti-racism trainer with the new jersey episcopal church but i am most proud of the fact that i am daughter of 1968 olympian dr john w carlos many of you may recognize that name if you're of my generation my father is dr john cross on the right hand side many of
013you remember this demonstration on the podium during the 1968 olympics in mexico city during the national anthem people have often called it a protest or they've called a black power salute but in the carlos family and in the smith's family tommy smith in the center there we call this a demonstration what most people don't know is that my father john carlos and tommy smith and peter norman on the left were demonstrating regarding humanity and equality for all so they were demonstrating not just for the poor black and brown families in the united states but all around the world there was a lot of poverty in mexico city at the time during these olympics and peter norman uh who has passed now was also part of this demonstration and the only reason he didn't have his
014hands in the sky is because he did not have a glove but if you go and do the homework in google you'll see that there were many other symbolisms draped across all three of them to show this demonstration right so my father spoke specifically um about all of the black service workers in harlem who had no money including his parents right and knowing that he was on the world stage and being um lauded for at the time being a bronze medalist but knowing that when he came back to the united states there was going to be challenges around his employment his humanity and the safety of his wife and his young daughter at the time which was me um and so i've sat back and watched my father for more than 50 years do this
015work as a motivational speaker as a publisher of two books um he was a high school administrator for more than 30 years and how passionate he's been about equality and equity and justice and so if i am half of the change maker that he is i will have lived a well life so that gives you an idea of why i'm so passionate about the work that i do so today we're going to have a conversation about structural institutional systemic racism it's important for you to understand that the conversation we're getting ready to have is not about personal behavior it's about infrastructure right and i want to make sure that we understand that so let's look at some words that i think are really important what is discrimination discrimination is a prejudicial treatment of a person
016or person's base solely on their membership in a certain group or category discrimination is the actual behavior towards members of another group it involves excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to other groups what is prejudice prejudice is a positive or negative attitude towards individuals based upon their membership in a particular social group and what is bigotry bigotry is intolerance towards those who hold different opinions from oneself quote the difficulties of combating prejudice and bigotry all of us have the capacity as human beings to be discriminatory prejudice and bigoted that's part of our nature right we all have those dark sides of ourselves and because of different ways that we've been socialized to view quote unquote the other right we all have the ability to be discriminatory prejudice and bigoted
017however that is not racism people typically confuse racism or quote unquote racist behaviors with discrimination and bigotry and prejudice but racism is indeed a system it is an infrastructure racism is reflected in societal disparities relating to wealth income criminal justice employment housing health care education and political power so to give you just a brief background race is not a biological factor it's not a thing it is a human construct and if you do your homework on where the construct of race came from it was created well before the 1600s as a strategic way to separate those who would be in power and those who would not and it just so happened that that was divided based on skin color and then of course there were an entire group of quote unquote scientists that created pseudoscience
018to try and prove which humans were superior and which humans were sub-human and that is how the construct of race began and it was on that construct that all of our infrastructures in the united states have been created so it literally infuses every part of our society there is no part of our united states culture that systemic racism has not been weaved into the fabric of so when you hear me talk about racism i'm talking about an infrastructure i'm talking about the distribution of wealth i'm talking about the distribution of income i'm talking about our criminal justice system i'm talking about our employment system talking about political power and what we're going to get really specific about today is how systemic racism affects the lived experience of our black and brown children and their families
019so because of that very very brief definition because racism is so um involved there's so many layers right that i literally could teach for three days and we will not even begin to tap into um how complex racism is but because of the construct of race and the way our country has been built on racist infrastructures and socialized to believe those racist instruction infrastructures we all have what we call implicit bias and that implicit bias is a vicious cycle because the structural racism supports implicit bias and the implicit bias supports the structural racism so i'm going to ask you to indulge me and i just want to read a little bit to you about this chart which i feel is just so powerful so dominant narratives about race family media and society coupled with racialized
020structural arrangements and differential outcomes by race all prime us to believe that people of color are inferior to white people create and maintain harmful associations and lead us to make harmful assumptions consciously and unconsciously about people of color race is created to justify enslaving people from africa for economic engine of our country policies and practices are consolidate and protect power bestow unearned economic social cultural and political advantage to people called white quote unquote and unearned disadvantage to people of color quote unquote national narratives ideology belief systems about people of color being less than human and less than white justifies mistreatment and inequality white supremacy inequitable outcomes and experiences resulting from policy decisions in health housing employment education and life expectancy reinforces white supremacist beliefs and ideology dominant narrative uses disparate outcomes as evidence of white
021superiority promotes whiteness as normal and desirable and justifies inequality so again for those who are feeling really uncomfortable right now and that should be everybody in the room remember we are talking about infrastructures so we're not talking about specific behaviors but we are talking about the way we've been socialized to believe certain things about certain populations in our country right and that's whether we are consciously or unconsciously aware of that so we have a vicious cycle which means as a country as a very young country or as our youth poet laureate says an unfinished country as all of those things we have a lot of work to do so i want to talk specifically about structural racism in education and this slide comes from erase racism and it talks about what structural racism looks like
022in education in very general terms i am not an educator you are the experts of your experience as educators i'm sharing information based on research and so i want to make that clear that in no way am i the expert on racism and education but i want to share with you just a general sense of the research around that so if you look at this chart on the left it shows you again the vicious cycle um that structural racism has in our communities right because schools influence employment and career prospects and employment impacts income and access to housing and then housing discrimination causes residential segregation and unequal education opportunities right and it becomes a vicious cycle and we're going to look at some of the systems that often oppress communities um and keep communities in
023poverty which we know affects the education of those communities right so what is it what is structural racism in education structural racism is the historical and ongoing racial discrimination and segregation of african americans blacks in particular but also latinos asians which is typically instigated or sanctioned by government structural racism creates inequality in every aspect of life so it would be easy to say well it doesn't affect education but it absolutely does and because it affects education it means that our youngest students our youngest students who are going into preschool and kindergarten at four and five are already being affected by structural racism in the very beginning of their psychological emotional foundation and development so as educators i'm sure you're aware of adverse childhood experiences um these are pretty profound um i believe it or not
024did not learn about aces until i want to say maybe 10 years ago and i literally stumbled upon it i was at a conference with a colleague and it was a conference on trauma and we went to a workshop and i thought adverse childhood experiences you know the title was so fascinating so i went to this workshop and i was handed a test and i was asked to answer 10 questions and i answered these 10 questions and out of those ten questions i had nine on the aces scale nine adverse childhood experiences i had had in my life as a child right and it brought back memories that i had suppressed for years and i'm grateful that at that time i had been in recovery long enough and had done the personal work long enough
025where i was able to embrace that and actually feel affirmed by it because for the first time in my life i realized that my alcoholism was not what was wrong with me but it was what had happened to me so understanding adverse childhood experiences is a powerful tool in learning to begin to build infrastructures that are life-affirming so just as a review traumatic events that can have negative lasting effects on health and well-being so looking at household challenges right domestic violence substance abuse mental illness parental separation divorce or an incarcerated parent abuse emotional abuse physical abuse sexual abuse emotional neglect physical neglect right people with six or more aces can die 20 years earlier than those who have none one eighth of the population have more than four aces 67 percent of the population have
026at least one ace four or more aces will actually cause a person to be three times the level of lung disease and adult smoking 14 times the number of suicide attempts 4.5 times the more likely to develop depression two times the level of liver disease four times as likely to have begun intercourse by age 15 and 11 times the level of intravenous drug use and if you look at the chart on the bottom right where it talks about the lifespan right so a child as young as two and three or even trauma in the womb right starting out with adverse childhood experiences finds that they have disrupted neural development social emotional and cognitive impairment adoption of health risk behaviors disease disability social problems and early death right the interesting thing and we're going to talk
027more about this is that often black and brown families and communities are faulted for their own depression i'm sorry their own oppression and the behaviors that come out of being oppressed and marginalized so it's easy for people to look at this chart and say well if there's challenges in the household then the household needs to do a better job right the parents just shouldn't abuse their children right or they just shouldn't neglect them well the parent just shouldn't end up in prison right it's easy to actually blame those who are oppressed for their own behaviors but this next slide i think is even more powerful and this comes from aces connection because if you look at this tree of what's going on in the household incarcerated family member diverse divorce homelessness parental mental illness physical
028and emotional neglect bullying domestic violence maternal depression emotional and sexual abuse alcoholism and drug abuse it's easy again to say well they need to do a better job in a household but if you look at the roots of these things historical trauma substandard schools structural racism lack of social capital mobility poor water and air quality which is environmental injustice right violence poverty which is strategic financial oppression substandard wages which is unemployment or underemployment right poor housing quality and affordability which is housing justice right lack of jobs all of these things that are in the community again born out of systemic racism clearly is going to affect not only what's going on in the household but what's going on in the community at large and then if you look at a lot of your environmental issues
029that often happen in our porous communities right a lot of our climate crisis a lot of our natural disasters um if you think about poor drinking water and mold and vermin infestation and asbestos and a whole host of other environmental injustices all of these affect students and their families and their communities and unfortunately because of the way black and brown populations have been socialized in this country we have a tendency to adultify and criminalize our black and brown youth and when i say black and brown i want to be specific in this country we view those who are of african descent as black that is whether you are black british black american black mexican black african black canadian black caribbean if you are of african descent you get lumped into the black category just like
030if you are of european descent whether you're irish or jewish or italian um or greek right you get lumped into the white category right and brown is latino or latinx asian east asian right so just to give you an idea when i say black and brown youth we have a tendency to adultify and criminalize black and brown youth and i want to give you some examples of that we have young white men who have literally committed mass murder and have safely made it to the jailhouse we have young black girls and boys who have been arrested and brutalized and processed through the justice system for behaviors that are often born out of poverty and trauma and nobody has looked at those as health conditions or health crisis right we have youth that have been slaughtered
031in the streets whose bodies have been shown on national television to be lying in the streets the gunshots have been heard on the nightly news and nobody is recognizing that as a crisis for our youth we have youth that are struggling with human trafficking sexual trafficking substance use disorder homelessness that are literally being arrested and imprisoned we have youth that are going to prison for decades for shoplifting we have police officers in our poorest most urbanized schools that are policing black and brown bodies and we often wonder why we have black and brown youth that are falling into gangs falling into gang warfare falling into drug warfare falling into sexual trafficking if you've been socialized to believe that you as a black and brown child and everyone who looks like you is less worthy is
032of less value then it's easy to get caught up in negative behavior but we don't see that as a crisis in this country we see that as adult criminal behavior it's an actual fact there's research that black students are punished more harshly and more frequently than white students for the same offenses and i think what grieves me more than anything is the number of children that end up in the justice system at such a young age i cannot fathom for any reason at all why this little boy on the left hand side who cannot be more than four or five years old would ever be in handcuffs i can't fathom it i'm pretty sure that this child in the middle here is about 15 and the child on the right might be 20. i can't
033fathom why we would criminalize such small children and literally set them on a path in life that's going to lead them to failure that's going to lead them to incarceration that's going to lead them to homelessness that's going to lead them to substance use disorder but it goes back to the way we've been socialized to view black and brown humanity to believe that black children are less than to believe that brown children are not smart enough not capable enough not deserving enough and again we are not talking about individual behaviors we're talking about infrastructures that continue to perpetuate the way we think about our most marginalized most vulnerable children i also want to talk about the media and how the media portrays our children right when we hear words like thug and savage an animal
034and vermin and super predator right language matters and images matter especially when you're a child and if this is what you hear in the media on social media on television on the radio in newspapers in magazines then this is what you come to believe what's always remarkable to me in the media is the way our children are displayed whenever there is any type of quote-unquote criminal activity right the most um scary pictures you know that we can find of a child right is what's often shown in the media right and god forbid this child has been murdered by the police or anyone else bodies are literally shown laying in the street on social media we literally stream the sounds of gunfire on the nightly news when there's a prominent murder in our country right we
035trot out any and everything that this young child or young adult may have ever done wrong in their life to imply that they deserve what they got right conversely we often look at white children who have committed literally mass murder and we're told that they had a mental health challenge that they were bullied that they were unstable that they didn't get the support that they needed and the pictures that we see are their graduation pictures or their prom pictures right again it's the way we've been socialized to portray our children and the dichotomy between children of color and children who are white and all of this has a detrimental effect on the mental health of our children so if you look at poverty and mass incarceration and drug infiltration and tensions between communities and law
036enforcement and drug warfare and gang warfare and sexual trafficking and then you couple that with unconscious bias and adultification and criminalization all in our communities clearly that's going to affect our educational systems and it's going to weigh heavy on the mental health of our children and our black and brown children are dealing with levels of covert and overt racism and unconscious bias on levels that are so heavy and would be so crushing to adults and yet when we see behaviors that come out of these traumas we're not recognizing them as a health crisis we're punishing them for simply being children who are in pain i think this picture is so profound where it talks about worthlessness and grief and shame and depression and stress and being frustrated and feeling unloved and lonely and mad and
037anxiety and nervous and issues right one of the areas that i think is so important that we need to really think about with our youth is grief because grief comes in many forms it's not just the grief of of losing someone to death but the grief of losing a parent or a loved one to incarceration the grief of losing a parent or a loved one to substance use disorder or homelessness the grief of your dreams literally being dashed when you begin to realize how limited your opportunities are the grief of being treated less than human that weighs heavy on our black and brown children it would weigh heavy on any child but when you roll up systemic racism as part of the mix it becomes a burden that is almost unsustainable for our children and
038our children end up in prison in homelessness in substance use disorder or dead are you suicide statistics the surge is particularly strong among teen boys up 14 a year between 2015 and 2017. suicide rates for teenage girls meanwhile rose 8 annually between 2000 and 2017. tragically teens can be vulnerable to suicide as they navigate the emotional pitfalls of growing up and a new u.s study suggests black teens might be the most vulnerable of all suicide rates among black girls aged 13 to 19 rose 182 between 2001 and 2017. while the rate among black teen boys rose 60 percent during that same time so i think it's important to have this conversation around youth suicide because i think that we have again been socialized to believe that black and brown children don't die by suicide not
039only do they die by suicide but i think because of social media things have become so much more clear because of mass incarceration and strategic drug infiltration black families and communities have been decimated because of social media black and brown children are bombarded with such negative images and beliefs and i think all of this has a lot to do with why these numbers continue to rise i want to just also talk about the impact that the last four years have had on our immigrant children and the horrors that they've experienced um coming into this country and how those traumas are gonna affect them and their families for generations to come i want to talk about the anti-hate that we're seeing across this country for our asian children and brothers and sisters again because of the
040language and the images that we've seen for the last four years it's important to understand what we're talking about when we're talking about systemic racism we are essentially talking about anybody who is not white so what that means is again we can all be discriminatory and prejudice and bigoted but people of color do not have the collective power or privilege to show racist behaviors and because people of color don't have that power or privilege they are indeed the most marginalized in this country regardless of what category they fall in whether you're black indigenous american indian or a person of color the experiences of racism are different but racism affects everybody in this country who is a person of color and those who are impacted the most are our most vulnerable which our our youth so
041what do we do right the horse is out of the barn i mean you know we've been dealing with systemic racism for more than 400 years now we understand that race is a construct therefore racism is a construct we understand that all of us white folks and people of color have been socialized to believe in superiority and inferiority right and more or less right we all walk around with this concept like life is a giant pie and if i give you more then i'm gonna have less right but if i i can be philosophical for a moment i i want to share with you that i believe that our world has enough for everybody we all have the ability to be affirmed we all have the ability to receive equity in life i believe that
042it's not a matter of well if i give black folks more then i'll have less or if i give the immigrant more then i'll have less or if the asian comes over and opens up another store then that's a store that i can't open up you know all of that is um distorted thinking because equity affords us everything that we need in this world it's a matter of changing the way we view the world from who is superior who is inferior to how do we provide life affirming systems how do we as a community of change makers create life-affirming frameworks that support not just all our youth but more specifically our black brown and urban youth who are our most vulnerable and marginalized and when i say life affirming i mean giving life value positive
043and optimistic quality of life optimistic understanding that you have opportunities that you have choices that the world belongs to you the same way it belongs to people who don't look like you right and frameworks are structures what structures and systems think policies and practices that we can put into place that not only support but empower our black and brown and urban youth right if we begin to think not what's wrong with this child and their family but what has happened to this child and their family and how can we empower them because the truth is people aren't interested in being saved people are interested in being empowered and people are the best experts of their lived experience and if you listen long enough people will tell you what they need so i want to share
044with you three strategies that i think are really really important to affirm students of color and incidentally i think that these are strategies that are not only for educators but also for our community leaders our parents and our caregivers these are strategies that all of us should be embracing and practicing to empower all students but especially our students of color so i think anti-racism is important and the reason i think anti-racism is important is because if we don't address the elephant in the room if we don't recognize the dragon that we really need to fight then we struggle to really implement diversity equity and inclusion right so it's important that we recognize what racism looks like where racism came from and how to begin to dismantle it and replace it with equitable and just practices
045equitable and just infrastructures equitable and just systems right it's important that we have the education and the awareness and the knowledge racism is a scary word because we think of men riding in the middle of the night with white hoods and burning crosses and absolutely that is bigoted violent brutal behavior but real racism is an infrastructure and when we begin to understand that then we can begin to work to dismantle it i also think that aces training for educators is very important again because we have to know all of us as community members and as change makers have to know what trauma looks like right that angry black child is probably traumatized and they're not disrupting your classroom just because they don't like you they're probably in pain their humanity is saying please listen to
046me so understanding what adverse childhood experiences are and how to respond to that how to create empowering environments for our most vulnerable children who are dealing with the most heavy of these experiences in their lives and then specifically for our students teaching them what wellness resiliency and self-advocacy looks like and that's important again for all students but let me explain something most black and brown folks in this country have not been taught what self-advocacy looks like we've been socialized to believe that you are a person of color therefore you do not have a voice and you are in a place of service we've been socialized to believe that we need to make sure everybody in the room is comfortable because for centuries when white folks were uncomfortable black and brown people were murdered so we've
047been taught to be quiet and keep our heads down and when i say that i mean that literally and figuratively so many of our black and brown students have not seen self-advocacy modeled in their homes and in their communities we need to teach our students to have a voice and that their voices of value and that they have a right to bring their voice into the room and into the table to speak to what their needs are they need to learn how to find trusted sources trusted adults that they can go to in confidence when they're struggling we need to teach our students what wellness means physical wellness emotional mental wellness psychological wellness financial wellness spiritual wellness right that needs to be a priority because when our students understand what wellness is then they understand
048what crisis and illness looks like and then building resiliency now we all know that children are very resilient but what if we were intentional about teaching them resiliency right we know that if a child has just one adult just one adult that they trust that respects them that appreciates them that empowers them an adult that they know is going to hold their confidence their resiliency level is skyrockets now imagine having an entire school system and an entire community of adults that do that for our youth for all of our youth our black youth our brown youth our white youth what a generation we would build so for resilience we're talking about confidence right having feelings of confidence effectiveness in coping with stressful situations and strong self-esteem are inherent to feeling resilient social support building good
049relationships with others and seeking support can help individuals overcome adverse situations adaptability flexibility and adapting to changing situations which are beyond our control are essential to maintaining resilience and purposefulness having a clear sense of purpose clear values drive and direction helps individuals to persist and achieve in the face of setbacks and self-advocacy speaking up for yourself staying informed knowing your rights finding support problem solving self-determination and asking for help so for seven years um i was the uh founder and volunteer executive director for the urban mental health alliance that's one of the things i am the most proud of and we uh advocated for mental health and wellness and mental illness and substance use disorder recovery specifically in urban communities and when i say urban i mean black brown impoverished communities right um and so
050we did a lot of workshops and panels and we had a health and well mental health and wellness conference and we did festivals um and i had the pleasure of meeting so many people and one of the things that i learned is that many people didn't understand what self-advocacy and resiliency was as adults as adults right and so i began to design programs around what self-advocacy looked like what resiliency looked like right so that adults could begin to learn this what if we were to teach our children this while they're young so that when they became adults these are skills that they've already mastered how different would our families be how different would our communities be so i love um this slide this is uh from moving forward building culturally safe organizations this is actually
051in vancouver this was a conference that was back in 2014 and i just think this slide is so powerful right it talks about healing tools and methods for youth right so it talks about music and um building strong minds and bodies and spirits and teaching children that they are beautiful people and looking for positive teachers right creating healing tools for ourselves hearing our own anger right finding somebody that you trust finding art being in nature decolonizing the way we view education right i just think that this is such a powerful slide um and it talks about all the ways in which we can continue to build up our communities and in turn empower our youth another powerful slide talks about how we can strengthen our communities right so strengthen economic supports for families change social
052norms to support parents and positive parenting provide quality care and education early in life enhance parenting skills to promote healthy child development and intervene to lessen harms and prevent future risks now i'm going to go out on a limb and say that amherst pelham is is more than likely working very hard to put these infrastructures in place right just by virtue of the fact that you reached out to me and said bring anti-racism training um speaks to how you value your students and their families and their communities so a lot of this may not be new to you but i want to validate and affirm how important these these practices are and i also want to validate in a form and affirm how difficult it is to often institute them right because there's so much
053injustice that has to be dismantled in order for us to put these positive infrastructures in place so i don't want you to get the impression that i think any of this is simple because i know it's not but it's important it's vital it's necessary any organization business company um sector discipline that is going to remain relevant and continue to operate from a place of integrity is going to have to focus on three things wellness dismantling racism and building diversity equity and justice so we're coming to the end i want to share some resources post-traumatic slave syndrome by dr georgie grew is one of the most powerful books you will ever read if you have not had the opportunity to read it if you're like me who's you know like a bumble bee flinting from here
054to there and you don't have time to actually sit down and read a book get the audio book um it gives you a real bird's eyes view into why black americans think and behave the way they do it has a lot to do with the generational traumas that have been passed down from times of colonialization and enslavement when african and african americans were literally kidnapped and enslaved and sold like chattel in this country right and that's a part of our history that we don't like to discuss but that history still is impacting black families and communities to this day and if you really want to dig into how that affects your black students and their families i strongly encourage you to read this book dr nadine burke harris is also powerful um and she is
055now the surgeon general in california and in her own words she said she never set out to be a superstar she just began to notice patterns in the children in her communities and that's when she began to really understand what childhood adversity was and and the long-term effects that it had on children in the communities so the deepest well is all about adverse childhood experiences and really beginning to understand what that looks like and how we can begin to heal our children and their families so two excellent books to start with uh the center for racial justice in education if you're not familiar with them at the center for racial justice and education we strongly believe that every educator has the power and potential to create racially just and equitable learning environments for the children
056in their care they did not pay me for this little um mention but i strongly believe in the work this organization does has been i've been following them for a while now um great organization to reach out to and potentially partner with and then here are some general anti-racism resources for you and um i will actually after this uh presentation is over be sending a um a pdf of resources for you guys uh and it will also have my contact information in it if you ever wanted to just reach out to me and you know you had a question or wanted to have a brief conversation i'm very open to that um i think that education as i said is so important and these are some areas where you can really find a lot of
057information right let me just make sure that you understand that this is not a sprint this is a marathon we are all responsible for doing the work and we're all complicit in the systemic racism systems that we live in white folks are complicit because they have privileges whether they realize it or not whether they want it or not and people of color are complicit because if we really wanted to revolt we'd be running around with torches burning buildings down but we've learned that when we revolt in this country we're often killed so we remain complicit but the way you make change is to become educated and knowledgeable and then you can become strategic and intentional about dismantling the most oppressive infrastructures and building equity and justice not just for ourselves but for our children and
058our grandchildren i have six grandchildren two wonderful children who grew up by the grace of god and got married and are doing so wonderful and between the two of them they've given me six grandchildren and it's those six grandchildren that i think about every day when i do the work around wellness and anti-racism because i probably will not see the ideal world in my lifetime but i have to believe that if i continue to do the work my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren are when they're going to see the world that we all deserve so i encourage you to view this as a marathon within the emotional and physical bandwidth that you have do the work to understand what racism and trauma looks like and so i'm gonna come into the room um and i'm
059gonna open the floor up to questions and this is always the most exciting part for me because i love engaging um with my change makers in the audience but i want you to i want to leave you with a question of your own right i want to ask you how can you the change makers of amherst pelham regional school district begin or continue to create life-affirming frameworks to support your students their families and their communities right so this question is for all of your students your white your white students your black students your brown students how can we create frameworks that are equitable and just that are life affirming that support all of our students because when we support all of our students in equitable ways then we lift the entire community so as i
060come into the room and answer your questions i want you to think about this question and i want you to take it back to your respective schools and i want you to begin to think about how you can continue to do that and how you can be strategic and intentional and unabashed about doing it and with that i'm excited to come back into the room and answer any questions that you have we can't hear you mike sorry can't be a virtual call without needing to be unmuted right um but i wanted to say i hope you're able to now see the comments on your screens off just an incredible number of appreciations um this should be coming on the right side to your screen ms carlos for your presentation today there is a little overwhelmed
061yeah they have a they have a shirt they sell and a mug in amherst ms carlos and it says amherst where only the h is silent our folks will let us know how they think uh there's no no concerns about that here at all and again thank you thank you for your presentation uh thank you doreen uh cunningham tim she and others who uh contributed to this way this day and making this presentation uh happen for for our staff and so um now at this point if people do have questions um because you know ms carlos couldn't see those while she was presenting because that's what she was doing so there's a couple in there but but certainly any present any questions comments that people like uh miss colors to respond to we do have
062about 25 minutes or so for more interactive dialogue which i think we all really enjoy so i'm going to start as people because it's going to take a little while to for these comments to come through um so i think one of the things that's a challenge for for everyone and including myself is that when you have a uh when you're working in an organization sometimes you can feel like individuals are you know sort of it's a challenge in a large organization to make a difference and i don't know what advice you'd give on an individual staff person i'm talking about any staff member not necessarily a specific role what would be a next step that you would you know recommend on the personal growth side of things about making that that difference for students
063families in our community yes excellent question so um the first thing as i shared is is the education and the knowledge piece right and so whether you do that individually or collectively as a district you want to begin to do the learning around what racism looks like and what trauma looks like because they literally go hand in hand right so you want to begin to do the work around what that looks like and as i said i'll share resources but there's a myriad of resources out there okay because once you have the education then you can do the next best thing which i think is so important and i call that find your lane okay what that means is within your passion and your expertise that's where you want to begin to do the work
064okay so i'm going to assume the folks in this room are passionate about education right because we have educators so that's one lane where you want to begin to do the work to dismantle oppressive barriers right but what about personally what are you passionate about and if you don't know then just think about what's made you angry in the last four years right is it women's reproductive rights is it voting is it environmental justice is it immigration what has really made you angry and got you thinking that there needs to be a change right that's your lane because systemic racism is so ingrained in the very fabric of our country you could pick any area to begin to do the work okay um and it starts with a foundation of understanding what racism looks like
065and then looking at the different opportunities to make that change and there's organizations that are doing it that's um here in new jersey we have an organization called social justice institute of new jersey we have um not in our town you know and a whole host of other movements and organizations that are really doing the work in the communities i guarantee you um amherst did i say that right impel him also it has organizations that are doing the work right align yourself with organizations that are doing that work again within your emotional and physical and psychological bandwidth some folks are going to say you know what i just don't have the emotional bandwidth to do that but i've got finances i'm going to find an organization that i want to support financially because i believe
066in the work that they're doing i also think it's important and and i actually teach a four-hour anti-racism training class and so i couldn't give you everything i wanted to give you in in one hour right but one of the things i think is really really important is for our black and brown folks in the room our black and brown educators i see you i hear you i know you're exhausted i know you're dealing with trauma i know this is frustrating i know that you often feel like your voice is not being heard so i'm gonna give you permission not because i'm anybody important but because often when we hear it out loud right then it validates i'm going to give you permission to make your wellness the priority which means you are not obligated
067to do any work around dismantling racism before you are at a place where you feel healthy emotionally and psychologically please understand that do not feel like well gee kimmy carlos told me as a black man i have to run out and i have to fix everything that's not what i'm saying your wellness is absolutely the number one priority before you ever have to make a decision around doing any anti-racism work but within your emotional capacity start with the knowledge and the education first and then find your lane because when you're in your lane it's not gonna feel like work it's gonna feel like empowerment so i'm gonna i'm gonna post some questions and there's a lot of them so i'm going to try to do my best but i apologize if uh they're coming in
068fast and furious but uh here's a question what advice do you have regarding balancing the attentive to aces and other traumas while holding high expectations for students oh that's an excellent question so i again am not an educator so it might be a little hard for me to answer that question i also want to say that i understand that educators were not taught right to to handle trauma um and handle racism right so i'm sure you're looking at your plate like this is not what i expected to be doing you know um so i think that's an excellent question to have with your superintendent and your other senior leadership around what are constructive ways that you can begin to build that yeah thank you i'm going to skip around a little bit another question thank
069you so much for your presentation also wondering how to promote an asset model of students versus a deficit model especially as viewed by white educators so talk to me about asset model versus deficit model so i think so i'm not irene but i know irene and i think where this is coming from and irene i know you're watching if i get this wrong please put it in the chat so that i get it right but i think that sometimes we when when educators are viewing students who have had some traumas that that we talk a lot about the traumas and and perhaps i think it's related to other questions in my opinion you know lower expectations is a concern like are we lowering our expectations around this and how do we focus on the strengths
070that students bring not not only the challenges they've had because sometimes that can lead us to some some thinking that doesn't actually promote their growth if we're only thinking about the deficits and not all that the value valuable aspects that every child brings to our district so right i mean i apologize you would have said it much more uh much more succinctly and probably clearly if you were on this end of the call but i think that's where irene's uh headed with that question i i love the language and so i'm going to go back and do my homework on asset model versus deficit model but if i'm hearing correctly what we're talking about is implicit bias right or unconscious bias right and so if we're looking at those children who have had some challenges
071we might not necessarily recognize their potential and their and their capabilities right and again that has a lot to do with the way we've been socialized right so we see a little black or brown child who's what are quote misbehaving or acting out and we immediately think you know that this child has no value they have no capacity to rise to the level of where we think they need to be right that's where you get um um micro aggressive um comments like oh they're so articulate oh they're so capable you know because it's it's almost as if you're surprised to realize that that that's um true right so this is what i always tell people in every sector that i work in whether it's education or banking or retail or think humanity first when you
072see this little child and i don't care how old they are if they're five in kindergarten or they're 17 in the 11th grade when you see this child think humanity think human being think heart think eyes and ears and and mouths right think spirit think soul think vision and dreams and beliefs think about the opportunities that could be afforded to them right focus on the child and not the behavior because the behavior is separate from the child right so you want to find why that behavior is happening so that you can empower the child that's being hidden behind that behavior because we have a child who gets angry and they're throwing chairs across the room we're focused on the chair we're not focused on the child and i understand that you've got 20 other children
073in the room that you need to keep safe i totally get that so what practices can we create that will empower that child who's in so much pain that they're throwing chairs across the room right and i can speak to that personally because i've had a child and a grandchild who's done that in class okay so you want to make sure you're looking at the humanity behind the behavior and it's going to take you some time to have that mind shift and again the more education you have the more you'll begin to normalize making sure that there's equity for all of your children thank you another one for marcia appreciate your explanation why much we must teach parents and students self-advocacy uh what suggestions you have to empower uh by poc caregivers around that advocacy
074piece yes excellent so i have the wonderful opportunity of being the board vice chair for a charter school here in trenton new jersey and um one of the things that i've really worked hard with the school is doing just that empowering not just our students but our our parents and our caregivers and our families right that these students go home to every day and so what i believe is every opportunity that we give our students to learn we need to be giving our parents and caregivers and families the opportunity to learn and how easy or how much easier is it to do right now while we're in remote learning right and so if we're teaching advocacy courses to our students is there an opportunity to teach those advocacy courses to our parents if we're teaching
075finances to our students are there opportunities to create short finance workshops for our parents are there certain parenting skills that we can teach to our parents and caregivers without judgment and in a way that would be empowering how can we invite our parents and our caregivers into the school to feel like they have a voice when it comes to the education of the students how do we invite them as volunteers are there committees that we can create that they can come and sit on to be a part of right you empower people by bringing them to the table and giving them the resources and the information that they need now what that means is you have to take your savior hat off because again people and people are their own best experts of their lived
076experience so you don't want to assume that you know what their parents and caregivers and families need you want to bring them to the table and then amplify their voices so that you begin to hear what they need and you begin to work with them to empower them thank you next question comes from amy how do we prioritize the emotional well-being of students on the heels of a traumatic year on top of existing trauma and i think this is uh you know all these questions are excellent and i think this is uh on the top of our minds as we know that students are undergoing multiple traumas that are novel in addition to the traumas that pre-existed covet yeah this is man this has been such a difficult year um not only for our students
077but for you know their parents and their caregivers in their communities and for our you know our educators and our administrators and our healthcare professionals and you know such a challenging year and the isolation of being remote and virtual certainly does not help right and then if you think about those students and families who may have already been in crisis because of poverty or because of abuse or because of um you know substance use disorder or a whole host of other you know traumas and crisis that families go through um it come compounds it even more right and so one of the things that i think is really really important that i encourage educators to do is partner with the mental health organizations in your communities okay so the national alliance of mental illness that's
078the organization where i actually got started as an advocate i had a child that was actually threatening suicide and we ended up in parent child group therapy and i was very early on in recovery so i was just trying to stay sober and also they had this child that doesn't want to live anymore and um i was introduced to the national alliance of mental illness and that is where i really began to learn about what mental illness is and how to advocate for your own mental health and wellness they are awesome organization they have a national office in virginia but they actually have a chapter in every single state and then also the mental health um association is another national program that also typically has a chapter in every state so in new jersey it's
079the mental health association in new jersey these are two awesome organizations that that school districts can reach out to and find out ways to partner to bring programs into the school that will not only teach your educators but will also work with you to teach your students and their families right what healthy practices are for your mental and emotional wellness but also how to recognize crisis the next thing i would offer is mental health first aid which is another awesome resource and there is a youth mental health first aid training program which i i am actually certified to teach it's a day-long program that actually teaches you what youth mental illness looks like what youth crisis is so how to recognize a child who is um potentially suicidal who is in substance use disorder who
080has anxiety disorder eating disorders bipolar disorder psychosis schizophrenia it's an awesome program again it'll teach you how to recognize mental illness and it'll teach you how to prioritize getting help for families and youth that need it um as well as how to empower people with managing and making their mental and emotional wellness a priority so those are all suggestions that i think are extremely helpful for our school districts especially you know now right now great thank you time for a couple more questions this one kind of goes on two slides when we return to in-person school we need to take drastic measures to help our students cope with the trauma and lasting mental health impacts of the pandemic what can we do to prioritize joy community and connection oh man i'm so happy you said
081that i'm so happy you said that question i tell this story all the time so a couple years ago i had the chance to meet dr angela davis she came to princeton and i was so fortunate to be able to go to dinner with her and so i asked her i said you know this is hard work being a change maker you know trying to disrupt you know systems and and create a better world this is really hard like how do you you've been doing this for 50 years you know you've been doing this right alongside my dad for for decades now but there are folks you know like me who came to this game late in life i didn't start doing this works i was in my 40s you know um as well as
082students you know who are just embarking on this journey how do you do this and she said to me you chase joy you keep the joy in your life right you make joy a priority because that's what feeds your soul and your spirit to do the hard work so you make time for joy right so for me joy is my grandchildren no matter what i do i build them into my life as a priority and i make room and space for them yes come run around my living room make all the noise you want because that is a joyful time for me okay so as a school district think about ways that you can build joy into the lives of your students and into your community as a whole how do you partner to create
083joyful events how do you build a joyful culture are there joyful activities right and that again is going to take a lot of communication with your students and their families to see what brings them joy right and i i agree i think that needs to be an absolute priority now what does that look like well there's a difference between joy and happiness happiness is temporary right it's fleeting right i am very happy about my cup of coffee that i had before i came on this morning but the coffee is gone right but joy is meaning you find joy and meaningfulness that's where the joy comes which is why joy is often long-sustaining because there's meaning within joy we find joy in meaningful things my grandchildren are meaningful to me they are my legacy they are
084my immortality so i find joy in that so what do your students and their families and their communities find joy in and how can you build partnerships to create a joyful culture in your schools thank you it's time for one or two more um so allison asks and i think this is a nice segue from where you were uh because i think this is this is a place where you know uh i've heard a lot of folks get stuck which is we want to have high expectations we want our support students to be able to have choices and whatever their post-secondary steps are and the joy and and you know i think everyone myself included believes that's a false dichotomy but i think any thought you have about what makes that dichotomy false about having
085you know providing what students need to be to have choices in their lives after they leave us but also maintaining that joy so i'd love uh you know allison's question but i appreciate and agree with and i wonder if you could offer us any tips or pearls uh about how those two aren't really in opposition because i think it's a hard this one's a challenging one for us uh in the education realm right right i think there's a good question and at the risk of sounding simplistic you know i i don't think that they um um are different you know i i don't i don't understand how high expectations can't also be joyful right um and so for me it sounds like you know again not being an educator the way i envision it is
086you normalize education and the high expectations and then you make that a fun thing right so in other words this is not punishment you know this is this is um a joyful fun part of life for you growing and learning and development right it should not be either you can be joyful or you can have high expectations but you can't have them together right and so you're going to have these high expectations and you're going to go on and do wonderful things in life but you're going to be miserable right or you can just be joyful and keep your expectations low i don't i don't believe that i think that you can marry the two so how do you make those i expect high expectations a joyful thing right and again this might sound simplistic
087but you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar so how do you get your students excited about these high expectations and how do you not judge those students who may not rise to those expectations as easily or who may learn differently or who or who may need different resources in order to be equitable right how do you manage all of that in a way that's going to be empowering and exciting and fun for the student right um i don't think that they are on opposite ends for me i think they're they should be one in the same right who wants high expectations if i'm going to be miserable right thank you and if i could jump in just to add to that i mean i think when i was a new
088teacher at fort river one of our elementary schools here 20 years ago and think about the mentors i had i think one of the things i learned was about the authenticity of self can marry those two that that that you know i was you know 23 years old and i spent 23 years on the call that's not an aegis comment just where i was at 23 and i thought i had to had to be a certain way and what i saw from the educators who i learned from is if they were truly authentic in themselves they were able to marry those two really well they were joyous rooms and there certainly was high expectations and so i think we've had a lot of experience this year in a remote setting of being uh sort of
089by as i kind of reference at the beginning sort of by default people were seeing our bedrooms or our living rooms or you know all those things and i think we've had a lot of experience sharing more of ourselves uh it's really good these washington post article of the day about this sharing more of ourselves with our students and their families than we ever had before but by the nature of the pandemic and our instructional model and i think how to bring that back to the classroom as we go uh as we uh head in that direction you know sooner or later um is going to be really critical but i think i think utilizing what we've learned this year about how to connect with students is going to be really helpful and just think
090of those models that you see and and i won't mention names but those of you were in fort river uh 20 years ago will know who i'm talking about because they know what great i used to teach and just really really they were themselves and they were able to bring that joy actually and that contributed to the high expectations in the realm um you know i want to i want to speak to that for a minute i want to say two things if you'll allow me so the first one is um yes one of the things that we've all had to learn is that we are going to be showing our real authentic selves in this virtual world right um i have a cat she's my furry best friend and i have been in like
091real serious board meetings or presentations and my cat will suddenly decide to run across the screen and also everybody's like oh you know because it's something real it's authentic it's human right so yes there's a lot to be said for authenticity however i don't want to i don't want us to be naive i want us to understand that not everybody is given room to be their authentic selves and our black and brown folks often don't feel that we have the freedom to do that now i've reached a point in life where you know i am who i am i mean if i'm going to talk anti-racism then there's not much else that scares me except maybe spiders and snakes right but it took me years to get here because i have the emotional bandwidth to
092do this work there are black and brown folks in this room right now who are saying i don't have the psychological safety to be authentic i don't have the physical safety to be authentic i don't have the emotional bandwidth to be authentic because it makes me vulnerable so if we're going to talk about people being authentic we need to make sure we're creating a safe culture for people to do that it's really important yeah thank you for that additional piece it's incredibly helpful um i think this is 942 i know tim's going to make sure that uh we we transition on time but i think we have time for one more question if that's okay with you kimmy so grace asked how do we keep liberation of our students and families of color at the
093center of our work asking as a white educator looking uh to disrupt how i perpetuate white supremacist culture excellent question so i'm when i send over the resources i'm going to send over a couple of um sheets that are going to talk about what it means to be an ally now i know that you know there's a little bit of controversy around the word ally and you should really be a disrupter and blah blah blah but i believe in the word ally what ally means is i'm going to come alongside you and i am going to empower you with my privilege and i'm going to amplify you and your voice that's what ally means okay and so i'm going to be sharing a few tips around how to do that but again i know i
094sound like a broken record it goes back to the education piece because folks who live with a sense of privilege and entitlement understandably believe that they have all the answers it's you're gonna have to shift your mindset and understand that you don't have answers for experience you haven't lived so it has to start with the education piece right to begin to understand what racism is what the lived experience of racism is what the history and construct of race and racism is starts there and then you can begin to build your skills as an ally right and that way you begin to amplify voices and empower voices as opposed to saying oh i'm gonna pull a rabbit out of my hat and fix it for you okay so do the work and um i'll make sure
095that you have resources that will help you you know begin that journey or continue on that journey as an ally well thank you so much um for being here this morning thank you for sharing more resources uh because this is going to continue you know we all need to continue to learn uh and thanks for contributing to that and you know there were incredible number thank you for letting us you know into your home quite literally um but but but most importantly thanks for sharing all the thoughts that you had that don't make us better educators tomorrow when our students are in class so oh it was my absolute pleasure i would love to ask if it's possible if i could get a copy of the comments yep um i will after we get off
096this i can follow up offline but i can email you uh how to access that um i would i would love that just because i see i see so many wonderful comments and i really want to make sure i get a chance to read them yeah absolutely um and so um i'm gonna pull tim on but i think before i do just one other comment i'm not able it's it's too far to scroll up because as you note there's so many comments but i just want to appreciate carol uh carson's comment that uh it was a long time ago but it was i'm in for the marathon right and i think that's the spirit with which we need to enter the work so i appreciate carol for that perspective and i think that that framing
097that you had i think uh it sets us out with an ambitious but long-term path that um will be better tomorrow for for today we won't be resolved tomorrow and that's not the goal the goal is to to be working as hard as we can as fast as we can along that path to be the district that we want to be so thank you for your contribution to all to everyone on this call in the district i really really appreciate it and i will follow up with you offline to get the comments in the recording um so you have that as well it's absolutely been my pleasure thank you again for your time and for having me and um i wish you a wonderful spring thanks to you as well okay i'm going to hop
098off i'm going to have tim come on i'll hop off with you kimmy and we can follow him and tim uh thanks for your work in this time and tim's going to describe some next steps uh for everyone else on the call all right um thank you kimmy and and thank you mike for running that for us this morning that was really spectacular um i know that i could have listened to kimmy for several more hours it went by really quickly i uh it was beyond what i imagined so so much incredible information for us to think about uh and so thank you everybody for joining us this morning um take up you're gonna have some time to take a break now um we have breakout sessions starting at 10 o'clock and um i will
099send an all staff email in a moment with the links for all the breakout sessions that you got the other day um please join the session that best fits your role uh for some of you overlapped different roles in the district so feel free to choose the session that that's that best matches you um give each other space i'm sure a few people will be running a little bit late uh entering their sessions uh there are facilitators in each group and thank you to the facilitators for being willing to to help to guide the discussion in those sessions but really we set these up so that everyone would have an opportunity um to reflect on kimmy's presentation and how we can use the information that she gave us to push forward um so facilitators have
100questions um but it's to guide the discussion it's not meant to box you into a particular discussion so please use the time enjoy interacting with each other as much as you can online if folks have questions feel free to reach out via email or text or google chat i will be at my computer and enjoy the rest of the day thank you all