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My name is Nathanael Gale I'm a program officer
for SETA Head Start

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For those of you that don't know SETA Head
Start is the grant grantee for the County

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of Sacramento
I'm Denise Gale I'm an Education Coordinator,

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also with SETA
We have been going into our 5th year of implementation

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of Teaching Pyramid in a good portion of Sacramento
County

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We thought to share a little bit on the vision
that we have tried to create in our program

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Some of the things that have gone well and
the challenges that we have had

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Much like a lot of you when you probably entered
into this situation, this Teaching Pyramid

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situation as we call it
You were potentially very confused and I know

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for the first year or two we were clueless
We would sit on our Leadership Team and everyone

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would go around the table and have such wonderful,
fabulous things to say and we would still

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be like "I don't know?

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We are still trying to figure this out."

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Our agency is moderately sized
We serve thousands of children county wide

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in Sacramento
Our SETA operated programs, the grantee serves,

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I believe 2500 children
We have 100 different classrooms at 30 plus

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different sites
So it's a large program

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What we have done, what we are beginning to
be in the process of doing is a cultural shift

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in our program
Prior to Teaching Pyramid, our mental health

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services, our social-emotional curriculum,
our services in the classroom had a lot of

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variety to it
Often, people would talk and they would be

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talking a different language
So we had a very fragmented situation

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With Teaching Pyramid, one of the most important
thing it has done is given us a common language

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What was pretty challenging for us to push
forward because being in a middle management

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admin situation and I'm bringing a social-emotional,
or mental health perspective to mental health

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experts
And telling them, "Hey, you know what you

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were doing?

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That's really cool and you work really hard,
but we want you to do this"

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I think some of the success that we've had
is that we've had some pretty strong driving

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agents in our program
I think if you are going to be successful,

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you need to identify one or two people in
your program that don't really take no for

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an answer
That are able to remove obstacles because

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there will be a lot of obstacles
One of the obstacles again is getting people

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to participate
We have had to become comfortable with transitioning

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from volunteers to volunteered and selecting
people

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We have a couple of our teachers that we have
volunteered to participate in our Leadership

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Team
Also, volunteered them to be mentor sites

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It doesn't make you the most popular people
but in the end it's worked very well because

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we have identified people that will drive
the ideas and will carry them through

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If anybody works in Head Start, then you know
we got a new pair of shoes every program year

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A new focus that we have to have
So having someone that stay true to that course

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and promotes Teaching Pyramid
We have successfully, and at this point, we've

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got complete management buy in
Our deputy director knows what Teaching Pyramid

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is
We remind her that she needs to be friendly

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and respectful
**audience laughs**

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Obviously this is a long process, so I'm not
going to sit here and tell you that all of

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our classrooms are CSEFEL strong, if you may,
but we are making progress

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We have plans on how to move forward with
this

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I also wanted to bring up, first of all we
train through the county in small pieces

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Some from each agency, that's how we started
Then we decided internally, just in a SETA

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operated program, how are we going to train
our 300 plus staff

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We had just a sprinkling of just 2 or 3 sites
at that point that had gone through all 4

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modules..

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The 3b thing throws me
I need it to be 1, 2, 3, 4 just so you know

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**audience laughs**
So we started with module 1 and broke it down

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to 3 smaller trainings so our staff would
come in

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We had to repeat it 8 times in order to have
all of our staff go through that training

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We just started off that way and it took us
about, and then we did the same thing for

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module 2 and then 3a and 3b
That was all of our staff, through 1 and 2,

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including our teacher assistants
Then module 3a and 3b were training our Head

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Start teachers and site supervisors only at
this point

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That is basically how we found a way to train
everyone in our agency

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And we struggled with our coaching, we are
still struggling to build that pool and make

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that stronger
I'm thinking there is something else she wanted

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me to cover
Oh!

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The other thing I wanted to talk about just
really briefly about is the shift for our

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mental health
Nate mentioned it a little bit, but we have

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Ronald Dent, who is here and has been a part
of it the whole way

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And Shondell who is now a portion in
Ambar as well

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To speak for Ronald as far as what happened
to him

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He was giving his services for years and years
and years and we came in and said, "Your services

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are going to change a little bit"
And it really is bigger than that, but Ronald's,

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the transitions he's made is from a mental
health specialist to a Teaching Pyramid coach

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So he is still working with some of those
children at the top of the pyramid who have

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referral
But more than that the job has evolved into

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a coaching position essentially
That is what they are solely providing and

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have been providing it to all classrooms whether
the have referrals or children at the top

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of the pyramid or not
So that has been a big shift that has effected

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our policies and procedures
We had to completely rewrite our policies

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and procedures that surround mental health
We've also modified all of our forms and our

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flow charts in regards to mental health services
to meet the pyramid model

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Now we are in the process of actually melding
our special education and mental health services

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into one very similar process using a lot
of the same strategies to meet the children's

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needs in our program