Please stand by for realtime captions.
>> Hello. How are you doing today? 
>> Perfect. You both sound awesome. 
>> Good. 
>> Great. 
>> I see the captions. This is so cool. So accessible. 
>> Very accessible. 
>> Sarah, do you want me to advance the slides or do you want to control the entire thing? 
>> It doesn't matter to me. If you want to do it, go for it. 
>> Okay. I then. 
>> You will? 
>> Yes. 
>> Amy? 
>> Yeah? 
>> It is Meghan. Pronounce your last name for me. 
>> Melik.  
>> Thank you. I don't like it when people mispronounce my name. Thank you for asking me. 
>> Yes. 
>> It is almost time but I think I will get people another five minutes since it is Friday morning. They might be slowly trickling in. 
>> Okay. 
>> It looks like people are slowly coming in so I give it another minute or two and then get started. 
>> Okay. I am going to go ahead and get started. This is Amy Melik. I'm going to go through some housekeeping items  really quick before I handed over to Megan who will introduce you to today's presenters. To begin with, all lines have been muted to reduce background noise. The question and answer session will occur at the end of the presentation. Please feel free to write questions in the chat box at any time. It will be monitored throughout the webinar to prepare for the question-and-answer at the end. We would like you to know that this webinar will be recorded and archived. It will be posted on our website in the next couple of days so please be mindful of your comments in the chat box and refrain from writing anything personal or sensitive. Macon, you can take over. 
>> Thank you and welcome, everybody. I would like to welcome you all to the third and final webinar in this three part webinar series about cultural competence. My name is Megan and I am the lead for family engagement  at NCDB. I am honored  to be able to introduce you to our presenters today. Sarah Otto is a professional learning specialist  focused on improved cultural understanding, communication, and collaboration with almost 20 years of teaching, training, and coaching experience. Having taught English language and literacy skills to every age group including adults, Sarah has enjoyed working in public and private schools, nonprofit organizations, and corporations across the USA and internationally. Sarah has her Masters with a focus on social justice and urban education. She has earned certifications in general education, English as a second language, bilingual education, reading, coaching and mentoring, and she is currently earning her diversity and inclusion leadership. Sarah has extensive experience as an instructor, a supervisor for several educator preparation and Masters programs all designed through innovative action, research-based models for maximum impact and sustainability. Sarah and her team of consultants support schools and organizations face-to-face and online positively, proactively respond to increasingly diverse populations. Joining Sarah on the presentation today is her colleague,  Amy Melik . Amy is an ELL educator with experience at the elementary, middle, and high school and adult levels of education. She currently serves as ELL teacher and coordinator for a school district near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Through her role as a Confianza consultant , she is a correlator for instructional materials. Amy is proudly serving her second term on the advisory board for teaching tolerance and is a certified trader and materials related to the organization. Amy's passion is with culturally relevant practices and as it relates to educators, parents, and students especially equitable opportunities for multicultural and bilingual families. Her current professional dormant projects are connected to social justice, education, best practices for ELL, mindfulness, co-planning to co-serve, and expanding the use of diverse text in every classroom. Amy holds a bachelor's degree in special education and English as a second language and a Masters degree in curriculum instruction and English as a second language. Without further ado, I welcome Sarah and Amy. 
>> Thank you so much, Megan. Welcome to everyone joining us  live or if you are joining us in the archives. 
>> We are really excited to be here. I am Sarah. I am introducing myself here. If you are able to CS, I am waiving right now. I would like to point out my colleague Amy Melik as well.  Hello, Amy. 
>> Our topic of our third and final webinar together is parent advisory councils and ambassadors. I am looking forward to guiding you through this topic and getting even more practical than we have in our last two about specific tips and ideas for working deeply with the groups that you serve. With that in mind, I would just like to frame our work by saying that we will be sharing with you some additional resources at the end of the webinar from our organization,  Confianza, and from our  collaborative organizations from which we partner. We do invite you to stay in touch as you find more resources on our website. By all means, please stay in touch. We are always sharing resources and opportunities that may be of use to you in your work. This particular professional partnership with NCDB has been  really happy to put together these three topics. If you have not checked out the archives, please do. The first webinar was about culturally responsive partnerships. That one was done at the beginning of June. After that we had one of our leaders from Confianza join us for informed practice  and strategies for reaching out to linguistically and culturally diverse families. Today, we are diving into parent advisory councils and advisories with Amy. If you have not seen the first one or if you are looking for a refresh, it is about the culturally responsive partnership. Mindset and best practices really start with who are you. I follow that in my own life, how to reach out and examine your own to learn about other groups. Then, we also shared some ideas about where you could start to build those bridges. I know that many of you have the state projects in this group beyond this level. It might be a refresh or it might be something new. Again, just reviewing where we were for the second webinar. The informed practice will focus on the strategies for dissemination, for reaching out to learning about the populations that you serve including technology tools. From what we understand, some of you are excited by these tools that can bridge the gap of language and visual impairment. That is where we were and where we are going today is a deeper dive into specific cultural perspectives on disability from different groups that I will be sharing with you straight from the research. I urge you to think about which group are you targeting? Which groups are you planning on serving or continuing to serve? Particularly, because our largest group nationally, and within this group are Spanish-speaking families, I will be sharing with you some of the different groups within the Spanish speaking larger groups. How can we work with the different constituents that we have to both honor their culture and help them understand the expectations from more of a traditional Anglo-american culture.  
>> Then, Amy will jump in and share her expertise around what do we do when we have a family? She will be sharing with you some tips and tried and true practices that she uses in her work every day. She will also share how to create and maintain those groups and eventually even empower some of the constituents that drive the work themselves to gradually model. That is where we are going today. We hope that this is useful for you and we will be sharing a feedback link at the end. We do encourage you to please give us anything that is on your mind in terms of what is useful and what else you might be looking for. 
>> Let's get started. We have sent out a pre-webinar video. If you did not get a chance to watch it, we do encourage you to. It does give you a lot of the themes and ideas that we will be discussing today. It is from the teaching channel,  one of Confianza 's strategic partners. I think it is about 14 minutes long and it is chock full of families' perspectives and stories of what has worked and some challenges along the way that could be useful for you. I do want to preface our work with this. We are going to be talking a lot about our experiences in schools but we do understand that your network works with other institutions beyond schools to serve your families including medical institutions and beyond. While we are going to be sharing school tips, please know that these can transfer to all sorts of different groups and contexts. For example, I work largely in schools but I have also worked with nonprofits and have used a lot of these same ideas for building relationships and learning about different cultural groups. I have also built and run family literacy programs and been involved in community literacy programs with culturally and language Stickley diverse families. I would agree that these tips can transfer. Knowing who you are working with is the most important piece. 
>> We really want to go beyond the surface. I am sharing a slide that has an iceberg on it. This has been something that has been part of each of our webinars. Why? Because the metaphor of the iceberg as a symbol of culture is very useful in the field of learning about different cultural groups. As we know, the iceberg has some of it on the surface and a large part of it is below the surface. We tend to think of this as surface culture and deep culture. With the surface culture, they are the things we can see or hear. As the slide says here, food, dress, music, language, arts, holidays. Those kinds of things are more obvious. Below the surface, we have more of those invisible aspects of culture that include concepts of time, child rearing, disability, behaviors, and values around friendship, age, gender, personal space, body language and on and on. While we know and the research substantiates that there is truth to group identity in terms of people from a similar cultural background, we don't want to homogenize any kind of group and forget about the variability within the group. There is this balance of understanding that different group. Also, really appreciating that everyone is different within that group. Once again, there is no one-size-fits-all but we do hope that guidance either validates what you are already doing or points you in the right direction to do deeper work in getting to know and empowering the population with whom you work. 
>> Let's get into the first topic for today. The first objective is about cultural perspectives on disability, family, and education. What I am going to be doing is reviewing for you right from the research six different cultural perspectives on disability. Resisting the stereotyping but understanding that there are patterns within every group I thought these six categories here, we are going to be talking briefly about an example of research about Puerto Rican families, Pacific-American , Mexican-American,  Korean, and Chinese-American.  We also have Native American and native Hawaiian. Even within those six groups, you probably are thinking those are still really general and that is true. They are. It is important to look at what researchers have found to try to understand those patterns within the cultural identities. In this case, we are looking at ethnic groups. Let's look at them. Let's think about what the research says in terms of the first one. Latino and specifically here, Puerto Rican example of it. This research is linked in an article at the end. You are urged to go in and read this on your own. Within research with Puerto Rican families, there has been the insight that more print traditional perspectives include the beliefs that the disability may be caused by God's punishment. According to one Puerto Rican mother in this particular study, she was saying that God gives these children's mothers who have special capabilities. She is a good person, not one deserving punishment. God knew she could deal with the situation so he chose her to have this child. A child with a disability is a blessing and a gift to help the mother become a better person. That is one cultural perspective coming from a group of different Puerto Rican families studied in this particular study. Okay. Let's move on to the Mexican-American belief of disability.  Mexican-American families regarded their child with disabilities  as disabled and healthy. Any kind of impairment or limitation was simply one aspect of the child's development and did not mean that the child was ill or diseased. Also, Mexican-American examples from these studies  described the child's ability in biomedical terms. It was simply medical. We can think about disability in terms of biomedical causes and sociocultural causes. You will see this as a variance across different cultures. Some cultures and in this case ethnic groups, view disability as simply by a medical cause or simply socio-culturally caused or in many cases, both. With the Pacific-American society according to this research , the family is seen as accountable for the disability. The disability may be viewed as punishment for sins or transgressions. Most times, it is associated with great shame within the family. There may be some blame because of something either the mother or father did during the pregnancy or conceiving of the child. It may be seen as an imbalance of the yin-yang or mind-body equilibrium. Again, just pointing out this is a huge ethnic group. Based on this research, these were some of the trends and patterns that were seen. As you can see, a mix of sociocultural and biomedical causes in this particular group perspective. Moving on to the Chinese-American beliefs about  disability from the research. Parents view the disability as temporary with hopes that the child may actually outgrow the disability. Those of you who have been to all of these webinars, you know I am the older sister of a child with an extreme disability. The cultural group from which I am a part of, which is your white typical Anglo-American group , we did not believe that the child would outgrow the condition although we have certainly tried. Certainly not a lot of the physical disabilities can be changed. As you can see, it varies within different groups. The Chinese-American research has shown as well  that the disharmony between the yin and the yang or the different forces could be another possible cause culturally. Finally, the Korean-American perspective of disability before we go into the next one shows that disability could be caused by a divine plan that could benefit the child and the family, resulting in a reduction of self blame. In other words, it was more of a traditional belief like the one that I described from my Anglo background of looking at it simply more as by a medically and socio-cultural. Native American and native Hawaiian cultures and ethnic groups show that the cause of disability can be placed on the family and the natural cycle of life. In other words, there are natural periods of harmony and disharmony. In these cultures, there is a strong collective value with a strong emphasis on family. With children with different disorders or disabilities, that harmony could be achieved to support the child through the family. Again, a different mix of biomedical causes and sociocultural causes. If that is interesting for you to dive into more, there is growing research from different cultural and ethnic groups that may be interesting to think about. 
>> The other piece that we want to point out is that collaborating as a team as much as possible, as Amy will explain, and getting to know the families and their own perspectives and what the individual variances may be, is essential. We cannot say that enough. Collaboration. Collaboration. Collaboration. Because within our group both of us naturally are working with very diverse linguistic populations, many of us are working with Spanish-speaking populations. We do want to dive into that and hear from you. Which Spanish-speaking cultures have you worked with? I want to be really clear. This is not how we would identify a family but we encourage everyone to identify their own group. I am going to go through this list and see in a moment when we take the poll, which speaks to you. At the top we have American/U.S.. If these are folks that are not just born in the U.S., maybe have not been born in the U.S. but that self identify as an American through and through. That is what you would choose with that. The Mexican or Mexican-American  would be again people identifying themselves as Mexican or Mexican-American.  Central American, we want to think about where that is. That is the Pacific region. Within that you may have folks. I myself have worked with central Americans who sent identify. For example, Guatemalan, Honduran. If anyone in that group, you which is number three. Moving onto the Caribbean. I just came back from Puerto Rico where used to work. Certainly that is also a complex identity group. People may identify as Puerto Rican but they also might identify as Caribbean or Caribbean-American. Within that group we have Dominican, Cuban. Where do you see the families that you serve? South American is also very diverse and large Spanish-speaking area. Of course not every country on that continent speaks Spanish but the ones we listed do. Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay. If those are folks who have worked with, please let us know. Also, Spanish. I want to be clear that some of my non-bilingual kids would say that kid is Spanish. Really? Is he from Spain? We have to be aware from identity groups. 
>> It is interesting to see what you are indicating. I do want to have one caveat here. We have these different terms. Those of you who are identifying as Hispanic or Latino, you know more about this than I do. I can tell you from the research and from my experience that the percentage of Latinos get used interchangeably. We want to be aware of the difference. Often, Latino or Latin is referred to as Latin-American. Again, Latinos may be from another country or from the U.S. and consider themselves Latino or Latin. That is absolutely acceptable. Whereas, Hispanic, can be more traditionally in the central and South American. Again, it depends on someone's perspective and how they identify themselves. That is a bigger topic for another day. We did want to touch on the different kind of Spanish-speaking cultures and the notion of Latin or Latino. With all of that said, let's take a look at the data from your poll. It looks like most of you are indicating number two, Mexican or Mexican-American with 62.5%. Then we have 12.5% in a couple of other categories including American/U.S. and including Central American and Caribbean. Thank you for that information. Again, if you don't know, this is an excellent question. Get the conversations going with the families you serve. How do you identify yourself? There are certain cultural groups that you would most likely self identify or place yourself within. Thank you so much for sharing that information. 
>> I want to say a couple of other things before Amy shares more of the technical knowledge of what to do with the families that you serve. In terms of the Spanish-speaking families, I do want to stress that when we are helping families understand expectations in a culture that may be different from their own, in this case we are saying Anglo-American culture, you want to think about it in terms of building bridges between language is on cultures.  There is a picture of a bridge here to signify that. If you remember, the name of our organization is Confianza  which is a word in Spanish and similar in other Latin-based languages that means mutual respect and trust. Mutual respect and trust really connotes this is a reciprocity. This is me learning about you. This is you learning about me. This is not us saying you, families from a different culture need to stop being who you are and totally adapt and strip or lose your identity to do what we expect. We are expecting the opposite. 
>> We want to honor their identity and ask them how do you identify yourselves? Are you south Caribbean? Latino? Really encourage people to present themselves in the way that they want to be seen. As well as we talked about with all of our webinars together, is that strength-based mindset. Instead of seeing what is not there or the language skills are not there yet, the ability is causing barriers, different cultural concepts, different cultural concepts are causing the mismatch. Instead of focusing on that, focus on what is there. If you focus on what is there, we are much more likely to succeed. As Amy will talk about in a moment, the creating learning experiences for both or all parties involved and learning together is very powerful. In terms of a one-way recommendation, we don't recommend that. Before I hand it over to Amy, I do want to share an example of what that could look like. This is from the classroom. This is from one of the urban schools that we serve in the Boston area. This is a powerful activity that we do recommend that teachers do and or anyone working with students. It can even be done with families. I have done it with families. Ask again people to self identify where are they. What is their identity in terms of culture, language, family history and all of the many aspects of identity that we have talked about in our webinar series. This is a poem called and I am one. This is a student who wrote her own story here. As you will hear and I read in a moment, she is expressing her bicultural identity and what we are really excited about is that instead of assimilating, we are subtracting the identity out of her. This is more of a conservation approach, the mutual reciprocity where we are learning from her and she is teaching us about herself and sharing what is important. Here is the poem. 
>> [ poem being read ]  
>> Again, leaving you with as much as possible trying to learn about and having those that we serve express their own identities to us rather than us picking up a preconceived label or notion of who they are. With that said, I would like to turn it over to Amy Melik  who will reintroduce herself and be diving into how do we support the families once we draw them in? And, of course, how do we empower the group that we have treated to go past that into a more ambassador model. Welcome, Amy. 
>> Thank you for having me. Again, I am Amy Melik.  I am very happy to be here to speak with you about parent advisory councils and how to start one and continue one. I wear a few different hats in my professional life. I am a high school teacher and coordinator. I also consult and coach for Confianza. I also just a pack for my annual trip  to the poverty Law Center to work with teaching tolerance. I am the lead advisor on their board. I work with them throughout the year as well. 
>> If we look at how to support families once we draw them in, there are several key steps that are really easy to start with. We will start with step one. Step one is be approachable and capture families' voices. This step is all about how to start a parent advisory group. Being approachable means that families are able to have that dialogue with you and they are comfortable with you. You will need to gather a list of families that would like your support and that you would like to support. Then, we need to learn where the families' passions lie. This will support our family engagement planning for the entire year. We can do this in a variety of different ways. When having the first formal meeting, we advise that the first meeting start off with lists. I like to use the Delta idea to drive conversations about school and purpose. 
>> Step two on our slide is about creating focus through vision, norms, and goals. These organizations or these discussions can help create a larger plan for your parent organization. This vision needs to be created by everyone involved through a variety of listening sessions and conversations. It cannot be created overnight. That is something to keep in mind. Sometime during the first few meetings, your group can create an order that will keep them focused and dedicated to their work. These norms can be about determining, for example, how you can communicate with each other and stay on task, ensuring that all voices are heard and how to make decisions in your community. You have to be organized through common agreements like these in order to make decisions. You want to work together as a team in order to achieve a collaborative work environment. After a vision and group norms are established, then the group can work on creating short-term goals that they can accomplish during the year. Goals need to be focused to support the great work these groups will do. They also need to have input from all parties involved. Families, staff, and any leadership. I am sure you are interested in seeing some examples of vision statements, norms, and goals. Rest assured we will be looking at that but let's discuss step three. Then we will give you some ideas from some of our clients. 
>> Step three mentions how to be consistent and empowering through the idea of gradual release. In order for any group to be successful, they need to be consistently engaged. Family engagement is more than a one time thing every year. You will need to set up a reoccurring time that works for the group majority. In the beginning, staff and officials may need to do the heavy lifting for the group but then after that, parents can also take the initiative. You may need to have to guide and support fundraising, keep the group on task, maybe recruitment, training, or supporting. You will probably have to facilitate the first meeting or two but then after that you can recruit and elect parent leaders who can help steer and navigate the group through a process involving a gradual release of responsibilities. Now, it is time for those examples you were probably wondering about. 
>> Some vision examples. We will go through those in a moment. Let's assess the concept of a vision statement. A vision statement is a natural next step after you have had a listening session. When you work with your parent group during the initial listening session, it is important to take very detailed notes. When you reflect on them later on, you will see trends. You may even want to group things together. I have often found in my own work that needs fall under parents, students, and staff or perhaps parents and schools. There may even be a theme or set of themes of inclusion, diversity, and identity that you can discuss with your group. All of these ideas will lead to a vision statement. Having a vision statement means a clear statement to someone who may be interested in joining your group. Everyone will know what your group stands for. They will see what is important to your group. They will also see that it is a true collaborative partnership between parents and a community which is what you want them to see. A parent advisory Council needs to have a vision statement that talks about proactive ways that will help move a community forward in a positive way. It is important to note that a parent advisory Council is different than a support group. A parent advisory Council mixes up everyone involved with the community. A support group will help parents move past an issue that has been involved with their child. A support group is for personal advice and for personal connection. While it may be important for parents to have a group to lean on for support, a parent advisory Council is not that group. There could in fact be also a support group and a parent advisory Council but personnel needs to help facilitate the counsel. Support groups need to be facilitated by the parent. Here on our slide are some examples of vision statements. Let's read through what is on our slide. 
>> The first one says the bilingual parent advisory Council will promote a family and school engagement environment for bilingual parents that promotes supporting families of bilingual students through outreach, advocacy, empowerment of bilingual parent voice, and promoting a school community that is culturally responsive. The second one is this. The parent equity Council will provide a forum for parents to discuss and advocate for a community that is inclusive and provides opportunities for all students to be successful. And then the final example is this. With the support of parents, staff, and students, our group exists to advocate for the creation of an environment that embraces individuality through the development of social, emotional, and cultural competence. These are all from an article that will be linked for you to read at a later time. We suggest gathering any business statements from other parents. We have more and you can definitely find more online and elsewhere. Sometimes it is easier to start from somewhere other than a blank piece of paper. This is where you can pick apart what makes sense for the needs of your particular group. 
>> Now let's go ahead and look at norms. On this slide are some examples of norms you can create with your council. Let's read through these. We have communicate clearly and listen carefully. Then we have refrain from using names. Talk about issues, not people. I will come back to that when in a moment. Utilize a talking piece to ensure equity of conversation. That when I really like because he would like everyone to have a say and have the idea of being able to be in a conversation. Some people like to talk, some people like to be excited to talk. Having that talking piece will help that. Then you have assuming positive intent. Ask for clarification. Then we have honoring the time limits on our agenda. Then, allowing for students centered conversations to occur before or after our meeting time and finally, making decisions on the basis of consensus. Again, we would suggest finding examples ahead of time. Some topics to think about when creating norms would be to assess time management, communication, and decision-making. Also, go back to your vision statement. A parent groups' goal is to create change alongside the school. It is really worth mentioning that this is not a support group for parents but the benefit of moving a parent advisory Council forward in collaboration with the school community, go back to the second norm example that we mentioned which was refrain from using names. Talking about issues, not people. So, thinking about we are here to discuss issues. We are not here to discuss specific people that parents may have an issue or problem with. We need to make sure we are proactive and not reactive. 
>> Then, we are also looking at goals. You have had your vision statement prepared. You have had your norms created. Now we need to figure out what our goals are. Some teams prefer to have an overarching goal for all of the meetings. These examples are listed within this slide. Our first example on the slide is our team will create -- will support creating awareness for culturally responsiveness into schools by supporting a school identity festival and monthly cultural exhibitions in school assemblies. You could also have the second one. We will support parent workshops on three topics this school year that support bridging the achievement gaps between communities in our school. Then we have our third idea. We will work with the school counselors to create multilingual resources to help high school families complete FAFSA applications. These are some ideas for overarching goals. Other teams we have worked with pick a goal, a specific action item for completion or continuation at each of their meetings. These all come from our listening session notes which is why it is important to have the notes from those listening sessions. For example, a recent council that we worked with has stated a concern that the website, there school website, and publications do not actively affect the student population they serve. For our next meeting, our communications director has been invited and we will work in partnership with her to make some changes. We will have a very actionable goal from our parents advisory Council that can be completed and worked on at our next meeting. 
>> There are two case studies that I would like to share with you so that you can see that there is not one right way to facilitate a parent advisory Council. We have some commonalities and differences so you can see that while we can provide you an actual recipe for a perfect thing, we can invite you to have some key ingredients that will be successful. The two groups I will mention. Both are suburban schools but one group was formed because there were some inequitable practices and conversations happening with multicultural families and students. I call them school number one. This school was concerned about school climate and upset parents mobilizing in a reactive way. There was a way to channel parents in a proactive way in order to work together, not separately for the same goal of equitable practices for all students. Another school, which I skull school to two has been working on equitable practices with their staff. It was the staff that said they wanted to involve parents and students in these equitable conversations. Both schools had the initial listening session meeting and both groups re-completed a list of what is going well, what we would like to see improved, and how our group could help with what we saw. This is the idea I was talking about initially for our listening session. Through this session, we learned that school number one set a project manager on it that helped us stay engaged. They also had a special education teacher who worked outside of the district who could give the team a realistic view of managing our expectations, giving financial constraint, and teacher expectations. School number two on the other hand had many parents who had experienced a connection for fundraising. Others in this group have worked as job recruiters in their full-time employment. After our listening session, both groups developed their action plan which was very simply a document that listed any and all of our ideas that came out from our listening session. We created a section in both groups decided to take an action item to work on for each meeting. We kept very detailed notes and made sure that we have an administrator attend each meeting. We gave each action item we worked on a task leader and then they reported out where they were in the process at each meeting. Our process for our meeting became really organized and systematic. We reviewed our agenda. We reported out our process and our action items and then we worked on the new action items. I would like to mention to you that sometimes this is not all sunshine and rainbows. Let's talk about the specific advice in this field. What I can tell you is to make sure you have a clear, consistent, and aligned message that comes from the top administration at your school. This message needs to be aligned with the missing and the mission of your school and open a consistent meeting set up so parents know that even if they can't attend one meeting, they know when the next one is. We have done this in several different ways. You could say for example, the meetings will occur the second Tuesday of each month. Then parents know the second Tuesday there will be a meeting. You could also determine that you want a social media channel, a page on Facebook that you could invite parents to. Maybe, and/or a page on the school website that parents could look up what your vision statement is, what your goals are. You have a very clearly aligned and it would be consistent with what the administration is also wanting. You have that consistency. 
>> Going back to my examples, school number two was so successful that there school board ask them to present on what they had completed that year. What we did was present on everything we have done. We brought up our action item document. We looked at everything from the attendance at recruitment affairs to hiring more diverse employment. We talked about that and we also talked about how we have started a family buddy group that serves to welcome new families in our district so that they have someone within the district to help them navigate all the new things. School number one, there parent group will likely divide into two groups. They really need a support group as well. I will be helping facilitate the parent group and then the other will be facilitated by someone else in order to discuss specific incidents or conversations involving their children. We learned about this need at our listening session. Parents attended. We were not clear on it as a support group. Going back to the vision statement of the norms and the goals, this will be very helpful to you as you set this up so parents know what your goals are. In this group, names were thrown around within our staff. While we actually did have a positive meeting overall, at times it was tense and emotional. On our journey, it is more helpful to have a schoolwork with parents to prevent or reduce issues and then having those conversations. Hopefully we are making that reduced. If we have those on the front and it to be proactive, the reactive miss would be lessened. We are hoping in the end that a support group will not be needed because our families will have the support necessary coming directly from our school. While there is a time and place for support and advice, a Parent Advisory Council needs to work on proactively collaborating . 
>> I am going to bring it back over to Sarah. 
>> Thank you so much, Amy. Again, I want to process this final poll with the fact that you may be doing different structures besides the school/family group. We are hoping that the guidelines that we gave you can really transfer to different settings whether you are working with the institution or medical facility or another kind of organization within your network. With that said, giving the ideas that Amy gave and knowing that you are all in different places in this process, we would love to hear in our final poll what resonated with you and what specifically you might want to try if you have not already. As it pops up, I read the choices to you. Number one is you might try vision, really articulating the message clearly. Number two, getting really clear norms, creating them with your constituents to be clear on process, decision-making, behaviors, all sorts of things. Number three is the goals. Getting really clear about measurable, specific goals that can be done throughout the whole time the group is together or as Amy said, each particular session. Number four is the gradual release which is starting to back away from the process if your goal is to have ambassadors step in and take your place and continue the group on their own. We have seven people who voted so far, eight. Let's give it a couple more seconds. So far most people are saying goals. Really instituting clear goals might be a next step to try. Of course you are already doing that, continue to do that. We have one person saying gradual release so that is interesting to think about as well. 
>> Great. We will close up the pole and we will move on. Just a couple of final reminders as we close with time for questions. We will be following up as has been done with each webinar from specific resources to go deeper into. We are not expecting everyone to take all the tips and ideas that we have shared in our webinar series to action but as we promote with our partners, try to pick one thing to take action on. Do a little increased cycle around that. Finally, the resources that we mentioned will be shared with you via email as well. The first resource is called navigating an ELL label, special education label or both. The second article is an article that Amy wrote. That is called approachable, focused, and consistent family engagement. Finally, a resource that Amy wanted to share with you that gives us some ideas, reading for social justice. Is there anything else you wanted to say about that resource, Amy? 
>> That one in particular is basically about following recipes. We are giving you some ingredients here. If you would like to create an intergenerational book club, so having people of all ages come together to talk about a topic, sometimes it is easier to discuss a topic through a book because it is almost like a third person. You are talking about the topic through something else. If you are interested in that, please go ahead and read that publication. It gives you step-by-step what you need to do in order to start a book club. It is very enticing for people to read something that is common. Then you can start that conversation when you determine the time. That is something I will be piloting next year through a grant that I received through teaching tolerance. If you are interested in that, you can message me directly and I can give you more information on that. 
>> That is great, Amy. Thank you. Finally, if you are looking to dive in more, there is a guide that is published around that. Feel free to check that out if you so desire. Otherwise, we would like to point out the survey link that will be shared with you. Thank you all for your commitment within the National Center on Deaf-Blindness  and your state projects. We really appreciate being part of your work. 
>> This is Megan speaking.  Amy and Sarah, thank you for that great information you have given us. An immense amount to think about. I am watching the chat pod and Maurice from California put a really good question in there. He said thanks for all of this. Hopefully this isn't too sensitive I'm going to go there, so to speak. Is anyone else concerned about the executive branch's recent announcement that they intend to use all federal departments to collect citizenship data that likely wouldn't be included with the U.S. Census? We clearly show our federal funding on everything we put out, as we must. But I want to ensure our families that we have no interest in immigration status and are committed to meeting the needs of all children and families, regardless of immigration status. I don't want our federal funding to discourage families from participating in our activities or requesting help from our project. If you are thinking about this too, do you have any ideas on what we can do to make our position clear to those we serve? I don't mean to get ahead of this issue but I think it's worth thinking about proactively before it's too late. 
>> Maurice, I am so glad you brought that up. It is such an important issue, particularly now as we talk about direction from the executive branch. It has always been an issue for those of us working with students and families who are undocumented now more than ever. It is very important and I will have Amy chime in on this as well, we can get you some resources about how to talk about this to families in our work with teaching tolerance. They are constantly providing guidelines and ideas for us around this. First and foremost, the message that we provide to schools and that we have schools provide is that a school is a safe space. Schools have no business in requesting immigration status. A family can choose to stay that within their confidential relationships, that is their own prerogative. I hand it over to Amy because this is a complex issue that goes beyond schools. 
>> I work with immigrant families and students in my full-time job. I think it is important to have direct conversations with families that meet this need and to ensure them that you are not collecting any data on them. Perhaps if hearing from them, for example, my students want to create a club to get support from all the different things that are happening to immigrant families, they were afraid to call it immigrant. They actually used the word international. That also invited allies to their organization. Perhaps being honest with your families and saying we are not the expert. Tell us how you will feel safe. You are a valued member of our team. Providing that to them, I think will help them feel welcome. The other thing I would think about is if you have a sign-up sheet or anything like that, which you probably should to be documented was attending, just make sure that it is general. Maybe it is a name and an email and that is it. You don't need to be gathering any other information for a parent group like we have been talking about. That is something else to think about. I would definitely reach out to them and be raw and honest with them. How can we support you? How can you be involved? 
>> I think it is a special and important question about being a federal program, Maurice. With your logo on it, being so connected to and being funded directly by the federal government, I would want to know more about this to give you additional advice if we could be so useful. Is there a pipeline from what you are doing back to the feds? In our cases when we are talking about schools, we are not allowed to as the law stands. I have had to interrupt schools from collecting Social Security numbers, believe it or not. That is not how you categorize students in the lunch line. You should not be collecting that data. There are over 10 million undocumented immigrants in this country and it is not the role of the school to do that. Often, families won't know until students start to apply for financial aid in college or they're not sure. I think your case is slightly different because even though schools are connected to the federal government, we have a safe space. Thank you, Maurice. 
>> I guess I would wonder if the federal government is being transparent about what they're doing with that information so you can be honest. Be as honest as possible while protecting the rights. I would want to know more about what is going on. 
>> Thank you, so much. It is a sticky question that we can keep trying to get around and resolve and have honest discussions. We, as a network, are going to create cultural ambassador programs that are sustainable and vibrant. We need to define the people from the different ethnic groups and cultures and know who our constituents are so that we can be mindful of how to serve them most effectively. What Maurice is bringing up is a huge challenge we are facing. We need to try to figure out some solutions to make them not be afraid to allow us to continue to work with their child and not worry about what that may do for them. It is a big one. 
>> Are there any other questions from other folks that are listening in? If so, you guys are welcome to put them in the chat pod. 
>> We will wait a few minutes just to make sure nobody has anything. 
>> While you are doing that, Megan, if I may share , we have a guide for educators and support staff for immigrant and refugee children that may be helpful to keep on people's radar. Given that your role is slightly different, but just to have some of the policies that schools adhere to might be useful as talking points in your work with Maurice's question in mind. We can follow up with you with that resource. 
>> That will be great. That will be extremely helpful to us too. If we can figure out how to best work with the schools, that can continue to help us to get families to connect with us. That is huge. 
>> I am not seeing any more questions coming in to the chat pod. I want to do this, which is provide a nice and thoughtful closing. This webinar, as well as the first two webinars will be archived on the NCDB website.  We encourage you to share them with anyone who you believe will benefit from receiving this information and hope that what was shared in this series will help inform your families. On behalf of NCDB and everyone who joined  today, I want to provide a sincere thank you to Sarah and Amy for their time and expertise. I have no doubt that your presentation will lead to great outcomes for families and I also have no doubt that as we continue to dive further into this work as a network, that we will be banging on your door again virtually to have honest conversations about what you are finding out and what we are finding out. With that, I hope everyone has a wonderful remainder of your day and thank you to both of you again. Thanks to Haley at NCDB for running all the technology and thanks to our participants  for being here today. Have a great day, everybody. 
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