May 24, 2018 from 6-8pm
UB backbone staff present:
Kassa Belay
David Harrington
Nysheva-Starr
Dionne Grayman
Number of FAB members present: 25/25
Accomodations: Dinner and childcare provided
Objectives:
- Establish group norms
- Preview how we’re going to spend time (include timeline, roles, names)
- Develop a shared language/understanding of language and social-emotional development
- Establish next steps and expectations
Agenda:
- Welcome, introductions and eat dinner
- Participants sat at a rectangle of tables, including UB backbone staff
- For introductions, participants went one by one, introduced themselves, and discussed one funny anecdote related to their child’s language or social-emotional development.
- Anecdotes connected to the work the FAB will be doing overall, which will begin at today’s meeting.
- Norms of working together set.
- Debrief from Leadership Council meeting
- Discussed the Leadership Council meeting two days prior at ACS (150 William St) and thanked the 8 FAB members who had attended.
- Summary of LC meeting content on family engagement and methods used at the meeting: emphasis on the LC and FAB member shared experiences of parenting and facing difficulties getting services for their children, even those who work in City agencies serving children; discussion of ACS Family Engagement/Lorelei Vargas initiatives to have more authentic family engagement, to ask “What happened to you?” rather than to judge; and summary of conversations between LC and FAB members.
- FAB members who attended the LC meeting assisted the summary with their own impressions (positive, excited, surprised at the authentic conversation and the desire of LC members to work with families) and helped answer questions from other members.
- Some FAB members wanted to discuss ways to work with City agencies and LC members in general at this point, but we asked them to hold those thoughts for future conversations.
- Materials review
- Review of the materials given to each participant:
- Personalized binder to be used throughout time in FAB to organize materials (containing the below)
- A list of who is who in UB: backbone staff, FAB members, PAT members, LC members
- Plain language descriptions of our goals, structure, methods, and language development and social-emotional development
- Timeline handout on child language and social-emotional developmental milestones for years 0-3
- FAB member job description
- UB Grant Goals and timeline for Year 1 from Robin Hood Foundation
- Draft of Scholastic Discover Together Brownsville proposal
- Evaluation form (Reality Check)
- Review of the materials given to each participant:
- Definitions/Anecdotes for SEL and Language Development
- Reprise of the Family Dinner (recruitment session) definitions of language development and social emotional development with
- Reference to milestones timeline
- Summary of plain language definitions of language and social-emotional development
- Reprise of the Family Dinner (recruitment session) definitions of language development and social emotional development with
- Interactive activities
- FAB members worked in small groups.
- Each FAB member in turn shared two vignettes from their lives that highlighted 1) a social-emotional or 2) a language developmental experience that happened between themselves and their child.
- Groups discussed how these vignettes related to their understanding of what language and social-emotional development mean and how that relates to the work of UB and the FAB,
- Groups then shared out with the entire FAB.
- Homework and Evaluations
- Meeting closed by thanking the FAB, celebrating the work we had done tonight, and looking forward to the next meeting, the 5-hr Saturday Retreat at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.
- Copies of the Scholastic Discover Together proposal were distributed and contextualized for the group, with the assignment to have them read before the next meeting and to begin to think about how they might be adopted by the FAB/UB.
- The concept of the Reality Check (accountability survey) was introduced, and FAB members were each asked to complete one before leaving.
Reality Check Survey Results
