Hi I'm Colleen.
I'm a resource teacher.
I was in a classroom.
A full inclusion classroom in 2011.
That's when I first initially got trained and I'm going deeper every year.
And I think eventually I'll end up in China if that's *inaudible* (audience laughing)
**off camera** I was going to say Sacramento had Going Deeper Trainings, which we did the
second year.
And then they had Going Even Deeper.
Then they didn't know what to say for the third year.
So they are like "Do we want to go deeper?"
"Do we want to go higher?"
So as she said, we just keep digging.
It's been a journey.
I just want to briefly talk about parent involvement.
I was one of those that was "Volun-told" two days ago.
"Thank you for volunteering to be on our panel."
Okay!
I'm part of the leadership team for CSEFEL.
We had Craig there just recently, which was a really great meeting actually.
One of the goals we want to work on is parent involvement.
I know about you and if you guys have any ideas to get parents really on board with
this, it would be much appreciated.
I take ideas.
I borrow ideas.
I steal ideas whenever I can.
We have an excellent set of social workers, four of them.
They offer a series of parent discussions about CSEFEL
"How to teach your kids how to have strong relationships with their friends."
"How to have a strong relationship with your child."
So they hold these series.
They do them in Spanish and they do them in English.
It's a series of four.
Unfortunately, we don't have a big turnout.
Sometimes there are more staff people than there are parents.
But, we feed them.
We take care of the kids.
It's very, very enjoyable.
So, we are trying to get more and more people involved.
Having said that, there are some of our classroom teachers...
Because I am a resource teacher, I'm very privileged that I can move around to all the
sites and see how they are all implementing CSEFEL.
Some of our sites are just incredible as far as getting parents involved.
One of the things was this one teacher asked a parent to make Super Friend capes.
Do we have that?
**off camera** I do have that.
I'll actually show you what it looks like.
This is Super Friend.
This is in one of our classrooms.
She has this huge poster of Super Friend up.
And the little post-its you see up there, are the observations, the anecdotes
that this teacher observes during the day.
She puts the up there and then when the parents comes in, they see what their child has done
to be Super Friend So that they can take it home and say "Oh
my goodness!
You were such a good friend to so-and-so.
You helped him ride his bike.
You helped the teacher put toys away."
And she puts them in their Anecdotal Binders.
So, it's a great way for the parents to reinforce this at home and the kids can also go up and
see their names.
She puts this up daily, so she tries to get everybody, or mostly everybody, during the
day.
This is another teacher and... can you hold it up?
The red cape This teacher asked a parent if she would make
a cape She only wanted a red cape and she took the
Super Friend picture and make a cape with it.
So, they have three of these in the classroom.
And the kids, oh my gosh!
They love them.
And there's a little button.
A Super Friend button that they also put on.
There was another one.
Okay.
The problem solving box there in one of our full inclusion classrooms.
And then there is this set of problem solving cards
We do send those home with some of our more challenging children
so the parents can reinforce these expectations at home as well.
And there is one other Super Friend one that I sent.
**off camera** Oh!
Did I not put it in?
Sheesh! (laughs) I thought I got them all.
Okay.
There was another one, um, from the same class Okay.
The teacher downloaded these little superhero bodies...
**off camera** Oh no, no, no.
I did.
It's right here.
There they are.
There they are (audience laughing) So like I said, she downloaded these bodies.
The kids got to choose their own superhero, and they put their little face on there.
So during the day when they do a Super Friend activity, they put it up on the Super Friend
Board.
It's a great, great tool in that classroom.
This is a full emersion classroom and they love seeing their little super bodies up there.
And you know super heroes are something kids really love, and teachers really struggle
with sometimes the messages that super heroes are violent and there is a lot of worry about
how they utilize those and to turn the super heroes into Super Friends and knowing what
Super Friend does, I think is really helpful I just want to remind everybody this is the
original Super Friend from the national website We've, Alejandro, where are you?
He hates attention so I'm so happy to point this out.
He is our artist who drew our Super Friend and has done all the drawings for Tucker Turtle
and all that on our website.
So we really encourage you to look at that.
But Super Friend is Super Friend.
Now let's go back to Elaine's Classroom.
I mixed everything all up.
My name is Elaine Hill.
I am a classroom teacher.
Iactually teach a double session.
Head Start is 8 classrooms so a total of 45 students and that is a lot to keep up with.
I'd also like to give acknowledgement to one of our other resources teachers in the classroom,
Jennifer Osalbo **applause**
Our focus is, in Sacramento City, is to develop a team
Not just a team of silos, but rather a team of support
In my classroom I'm really able to have a resource teacher, I can just put on speed
dial, or my coordinator and one of the social workers as well
We have this on going support, which we provide resources, not only to our teachers but also
to staff I don't know if you passed out the pictures
What you will see there.
One of the resources from one of our resource teachers provided, PDAs
And you can see around the Super Friend, there are thought bubbles as PDA reminders
We are able to place those around the classroom as reminders.
To give an example, "Wow!
That was a cool way..." to describe what the child is doing or even just giving a high
five So by having these thought bubbles around
the classroom supports the teacher We also are able to show parents how to give
a PDA, how to express one descriptively and we also have substitute teachers come into
our classrooms.
So as you can see, we provide this on going program which is important to children by
providing reminders.
**off camera** How about that Super Vision?
I love that Oh yes, the Super Vision, thank you.
The Super Vision is, as many of you may know, we are constantly on going monitoring of course
In Sac City, we are under the microscope right now, just like all of our centers are
So the Super Vision is when the on going monitoring shows how we unite and gather, but it has
the Super Friends there incorporated Even the children they love that poster.
They are constantly pointing to it Just like one of our previous examples, we
too have made Super Friends of the children.
They have designed their own Super Friends and we place PDAs on them
When parents come in we show them, "Wow!
Look what your child did today!"
And we describe it, and so parents look forward to those positive interactions as opposed
to, "Well, Johnny did this today" in the negative sense.
But rather we want to partner with our parents in relationship building.
It's going extremely well.
So one other aspect of our program is to have a daily job chart.
The children are grouped by color and look forward to being helpers for the day.
In addition to the classroom functions, there is also a Super Friend helper.
The Super Friend wears the button, and usually there is more than one, and that Super Friend
can help with anything we need.
"Oh!
We need a Super Friend over here to help with clean up" or the playhouse or what have you
or we need a Super Friend to help put away the bikes
So the children are eager to be that Super Friend for the day
So at the end of the day, in addition to acknowledging the Super Friend, we also acknowledge other
students who were Super Friends for the day Our future strategies, and I know management
and resource staff are constantly in conversation about this, is to bring everyone on board
with the training.
To understand the Why of what we do.
And so we ensure that our child sitter and parents have the little green piece and we
explain how these functions work as well as our goal to strive for 5 to catch the child
doing well and actually engage the children We really like to educate our parents, educate
our staff and also support one another.
Give one another PDAs and I think that's important.
Those are some of the directions we are going in and I'm interested in hearing today and
taking in more ideas and taking those back to our staff
So once again, thank you and we appreciate the opportunity