6th Annual PEAR Conference

MORNING SESSIONS

This workshop will summarize recent qualitative and quantitative research highlighting the ways in which teachers’ everyday social and instructional interactions with students serve as a foundation to students’ academic and social development. What do youth want from their teachers? What are the possibilities for schools to provide a new climate of support? The workshop will also address relationship issues in non-school environments and discuss the training and boundary issues for adults who work with youth.

SPEAKER(S):
Bridget Hamre, Ph.D. is Associate Director of University of Virginia’s Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning (CASTL). Dr. Hamre received her masters and doctorate in clinical and school psychology from the University of Virginia. Dr. Hamre’s areas of expertise include student-teacher relationships and classroom processes that promote positive academic and social development for young children. Dr. Hamre co-authored an observational tool for classrooms called the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) and is currently directing a major research study for the National Center for Research in Early Childhood Education.

Beth Bernstein Yamashiro - spent the past two years as principal of the Los Angeles Leadership Academy Charter High School, a social-justice themed charter. Over the past 20 years he has been a school administrator, grant director, and teacher, and attended the Harvard Graduate School of Education (Ed.D., 1998) where her research centered around relationships between teachers.

Engaged Learning

This workshop will introduce the community-based engaged learning approach by using an example of the Saint Louis Science Center, which trains community high school students to work with middle school youth in out of school time. The approach combines strong support, knowledge of kids, involvement in their communities and science exploration. This model is applicable to many other contexts beside science and demonstrates how strategies of engaged learning in a community are an essential part of the success of youth.

SPEAKER:
Diane Miller, St. Louis - Diane Miller is the Senior Vice President of School and Community Programs and Partnerships at the Saint Louis Science Center. Her overall responsibilities include initiating, developing, coordinating, and implementing STEM programs and collaborative projects with schools community-based organizations, underserved audiences, interns, and youth. Working with schools and community-based organizations, she is responsible to develop strategies that increase the involvement of audiences not usually reached by the Saint Louis Science Center.

MODERATOR:
Joel Nitzburg has masters degrees in Social Work and Education and over 20 years experience working on community issues specifically related to education. Currently he works at Cambridge College as senior faculty and the Director of the Institute for Lifelong Learning and Community Building. The purpose of the Institute is to collaborate with organizations and businesses, and using principles of community education, create customized educational services meshing workforce development with academics. He is shortly assuming the role of President of the National Community Education Association (www.ncea.com). Prior to his position at the college, he worked for the Massachusetts Department of Education directing a statewide project that established local coalitions that developed strategies for involving families and communities in support of children’s education.

Developing Resiliency: A Comprehensive Approach to Youth Supports

This workshop will introduce a new framework for developmental understandings of youth strengths and risks. We will focus on the importance of adults who create youth-centered environments at school and OST that are less stigmatizing than traditional “pull-out” mental health models. By introducing a developmental map of how young people grow, we offer a tool for directing multi-systemic supports to de-fragment both students’ lives and their surrounding systems, school, afterschool, family and community agencies. Through theoretical discussions, practical applications, and case examples, we will explore the RALLY approach that has developed over more than a decade of work.

SPEAKER(S):
Sarah Bernhardt Petersen, LCSW, MSW - Sarah Bernhardt Petersen, LCSW, is the Coordinator of Clinical and Group Services for PEAR’s RALLY Program at the Curley K-8 School in Jamaica Plain, MA. She specializes in adolescent and family services utilizing creative modalities and platforms for student voice to create personal and community change.

Tina Malti, PhD. - Dr. Malti is a Visiting Research Scientist in the Program in Education, Afterschool and Resiliency (PEAR) at Harvard University and McLean Hospital. Trained as a developmental and clinical psychologist in Europe, her research interests include the development of resiliency, moral emotions and cognitions, and social competence, as well as the application of this knowledge in developmentally differentiated, school-based prevention. Her work has been published in highly ranked international journals and as chapters in numerous books.

Gil Noam – Gil G. Noam is founder and director of the Program in Education, Afterschool & Resiliency (PEAR) and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital. Trained as a clinical and developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst, Dr. Noam has a strong interest in supporting resilience in youth, especially in educational settings. He is the founder of the RALLY Prevention Program, a Boston-based intervention that bridges social and academic support in school, afterschool, and community settings.

Trauma and Psychopathology - Newest Knowledge to Create Safe and Healthy Environments

What are the fundamental elements that allow staff to support youth struggling with various forms of trauma and psychopathology? Numerous investigations have clearly shown some significant consequences that represent barriers to academic, social and psychological success, such as disruptive behaviors in the classroom, campus violence, and widespread disrespect for authority. Perhaps one of the most prevalent, yet least delineated of these barriers, is the socioemotional distress in the classroom and OST programs. This workshop will present what happens to children exposed to psychological trauma and the cascade of resulting violence and other symptoms, exploring in depth the phenomenology of traumatic stress responses and the new knowledge about the brain and brain plasticity. The workshop will show how much progress we have made in treating trauma and resulting psychological symptoms and how we can foster resilient adaptations to overwhelming challenges. Participants will receive an in-depth overview of this fast-moving field, linking theory, research and exciting methods of interventions in the service of creating safe and healthy environments.

SPEAKER(S):
Frank Grijalva: Frank Grijalva is the clinical programming consultant for Boys and Girls Home and Family Services of Iowa, Nebraska and Alaska. Eight years of experience as a marine mammal trainer for the US Navy created a behavioral foundation that evolved from animals to humans and psychology to public health. His focus is the development of multi-disciplinary, multi-modal continuums of care for at risk children.

Robert D. Macy, Ph.D.: Robert Macy, Ph.D. is the Founder and Executive Director of the Boston Center for Trauma Psychology, the Co-Director of a Category III National Center for Child Traumatic Stress Network site at the Trauma Center/JRI in Boston, and the Founder and Executive Director of The Children’s Trauma Recovery Foundation, also in Boston. Macy is a pioneer in the field of Traumatic Incident Stress Interventions and violence prevention initiatives for children, youth, their families and their communities exposed to traumatic events including large-scale disasters, terrorist events, and political, community and armed conflict violence. Macy is a Research Associate in Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Macy designs, implements and evaluates traumatic stress reduction programs, and psychosocial assessment and intervention projects in the United States, Netherlands, Norway, Palestine and Israel, Jordan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Burundi, Eritrea and South Africa.

Gang Connected Kids: Preventing Membership, Promoting Reentry I

Supporting students’ life and school success requires all of us to take on the issues of violence and gangs. A critical issue for schools and afterschool programs is how to deal with early signs of “gang intervention”. What measures could educators, youth development specialists and police take to help these youngsters make the right choices? Are we making progress in preventing gang participation? What are some innovative programs that work and that have evidence behind them? How do police, schools and social services work together? How do gun laws relate to this problem and what are the policy solutions?

CHAIR:
Stacey Lucchino

PANELISTS:
Wilbur Brown is the founder and Former Executive Director of Save Our Youth, an educational and support project for undervalued youth in Boston, Massachusetts. He is a Masters of Liberal Arts candidate at Boston University. As a volunteer with the Boston Strategic Multi-Agency Response Team (BSMART) he works closely with the Boston Police Department to ensure that youth in at risk environments are provided with safe, caring, stimulating learning events where networking and mentoring can occur. At the AmeriCorps program in Dorchester. Mr. Brown served as supervisor of 45 urban teens who worked as interns in various human services programs throughout the Dorchester area. He was trained at the Children’s Trauma Recovery Foundation, and while working at the Foundation for six years, he served as the Triage Captain for 14 respondents in the Boston area. Mr. Brown was trained and worked as a Crisis Respondent with the Community Crisis Response Team (CCRT) at Cambridge Hospital. He has served as a Group Outreach Worker at the Roxbury Court Clinic.

Mr. Brown specializes in providing crisis and trauma intervention counseling and other services to court-referred and at-risk youth who are in various stages of transition. These services include funeral support, coping, strategies and de-briefing for youth who have experienced and/or witnessed critical incidents.

Edward Davis

John Rosenthal is the President of Meredith Management. He is a successful real estate developer and manager in Massachusetts who has distinguished himself in his ability to balance corporate and individual responsibility. He founded two successful non-profit corporations: Friends of Boston’s Homeless and Stop Handgun Violence.

Stop Handgun Violence was the lead advocate for Massachusetts enacting the most comprehensive gun laws and first in the nation consumer protection regulations for firearms and MA is among the top three states with the lowest firearm fatality rate (3.2 per vs. 10.6 per 100,000 popoulation national average) in the United States.

MODERATOR:
John Shattuck

It Takes a Family: Supporting Youth and the Adults Who Work with Them

Internationally renowned family therapist and author Terry Real will discuss how to help adults have productive relationships in family, and in their personal lives while working with young people. The workshop is based on the assumption that caring for the caretaker – at home and at work is essential to avoid burn-out to help children and youth succeed.

SPEAKER(S):
Terry Real: Terry Real been a practicing family therapist for more than twenty years and has lectured and given workshops across the country. He has been featured on NBC Nightly News, Today, Good Morning America, The CBS Early Show and Oprah, as well as in The New York Times, Psychology Today, Esquire, and numerous academic publications. Terry served as a senior faculty member of the Family Institute of Cambridge in Massachusetts, is a retired Clinical Fellow of the Meadows Institute in Arizona., and founded The Relational Life Institute - which is dedicated to teaching mental health professionals the practice of Relational Life Therapy (RLT™) and teaching the general public how to live relational lives.

AFTERNOON SESSIONS

Relational Teachers and Climate II

This workshop will give in- depth examples and interventions that can be used in schools and other teaching environments to create a successful climate. One example we will discuss is an innovative professional development model, called MyTeachingPartner, which uses web-based, video feedback to help teachers improve the quality of their interactions with students. Another approach is to create productive relationships through whole-school change. Discussions will include how administrators can support their staff in creating positive relationships while building while avoiding boundary violations.

SPEAKER(S):
Bridget Hamre, Ph.D. is Associate Director of University of Virginia’s Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning (CASTL). Dr. Hamre received her masters and doctorate in clinical and school psychology from the University of Virginia. Dr. Hamre’s areas of expertise include student-teacher relationships and classroom processes that promote positive academic and social development for young children. Dr. Hamre co-authored an observational tool for classrooms called the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) and is currently directing a major research study for the National Center for Research in Early Childhood Education.

Beth Bernstein Yamashiro - spent the past two years as principal of the Los Angeles Leadership Academy Charter High School, a social-justice themed charter. Over the past 20 years he has been a school administrator, grant director, and teacher, and attended the Harvard Graduate School of Education (Ed.D., 1998) where her research centered around relationships between teachers.

Engaging Young People as Partners in Schools

In-depth practical description and video material from an inner-city community program at the Saint Louis Science Center which trains community high school students to work with middle school youth in out of school time and an extensive discussion of others who use engaged learning in other contexts, reflecting on the implications of out of school time. This program has many of the elements of best practices. Science content is used as an example; many other contents can be applied to this model. What is essential about the approach is that engaged learning is a way of supporting young people and to link their passions to academic interests.

SPEAKER:
Diane Miller, St. Louis - Diane Miller is the Senior Vice President of School and Community Programs and Partnerships at the Saint Louis Science Center. She is a national leader of innovative community practices in OST. Her overall responsibilities include initiating, developing, coordinating, and implementing STEM programs and collaborative projects with schools community-based organizations, underserved audiences, interns, and youth. Working with schools and community-based organizations, she is responsible to develop strategies that increase the involvement of audiences not usually reached by the Saint Louis Science Center.

MODERATOR:
Joel Nitzburg has masters degrees in Social Work and Education and over 20 years experience working on community issues specifically related to education. Currently he works at Cambridge College as senior faculty and the Director of the Institute for Lifelong Learning and Community Building. The purpose of the Institute is to collaborate with organizations and businesses, and using principles of community education, create customized educational services meshing workforce development with academics. He is shortly assuming the role of President of the National Community Education Association (www.ncea.com). Prior to his position at the college, he worked for the Massachusetts Department of Education directing a statewide project that established local coalitions that developed strategies for involving families and communities in support of children’s education.

Crossing Contexts: Reinventing Roles for School Coordinators, Practitioners, and Clinicians

In many schools, there is an increased recognition of the need to remove barriers to students’ learning by re-imagining old roles for student support. More schools are hiring coordinators to help organize outside agencies, as well as internal school supports. This workshop will take a look at this trend, and propose a movement away from traditional single case orientation into more systemic methods to meeting students’ needs. We’ll discuss how RALLY brings practitioners to whole classrooms of students, as well as how other innovative programs in Boston, such as Out of Harms Way, are creating streamlined ways to connect services to youth.

SPEAKER(S):
Sarah Bernhardt Petersen, LCSW, MSW - Sarah Bernhardt Petersen, LCSW, is the Coordinator of Clinical and Group Services for PEAR’s RALLY Program at the Curley K-8 School in Jamaica Plain, MA. She specializes in adolescent and family services utilizing creative modalities and platforms for student voice to create personal and community change.

Tina Malti, PhD. - Dr. Malti is a Visiting Research Scientist in the Program in Education, Afterschool and Resiliency (PEAR) at Harvard University and McLean Hospital. Trained as a developmental and clinical psychologist in Europe, her research interests include the development of resiliency, moral emotions and cognitions, and social competence, as well as the application of this knowledge in developmentally differentiated, school-based prevention. Her work has been published in highly ranked international journals and as chapters in numerous books.

Gil Noam – Gil G. Noam is founder and director of the Program in Education, Afterschool & Resiliency (PEAR) and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital. Trained as a clinical and developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst, Dr. Noam has a strong interest in supporting resilience in youth, especially in educational settings. He is the founder of the RALLY Prevention Program, a Boston-based intervention that bridges social and academic support in school, afterschool, and community settings.

What Works With Traumatized Kids - What You Can Do

The effects of adverse childhood experiences are displayed in a wide variety of maladaptive behaviors and disorders for children in school and residential treatment settings. New evidence-based practices suggest that resiliency-informed approaches to traumatic stress responses can dramatically reduce aggressive behaviors, social isolation and poor academic performance.

Introduction will be provided to stabilization, intervention and prevention strategies for all children, especially vulnerable children and seriously emotionally disturbed children. What can schools and afterschool programs and residential programs do to be systematic in their approach to foster positive adaptations and resilient problem solving in the face of overwhelming challenges? How do you design, develop and implement these interventions within school and afterschool settings? What intervention partners should you consider? What are examples that work really well?

SPEAKER(S): Robert D. Macy, Ph.D.: Robert Macy, Ph.D. is the Founder and Executive Director of the Boston Center for Trauma Psychology, the Co-Director of a Category III National Center for Child Traumatic Stress Network site at the Trauma Center/JRI in Boston, and the Founder and Executive Director of The Children’s Trauma Recovery Foundation, also in Boston. Macy is a pioneer in the field of Traumatic Incident Stress Interventions and violence prevention initiatives for children, youth, their families and their communities exposed to traumatic events including large-scale disasters, terrorist events, and political, community and armed conflict violence. Macy is a Research Associate in Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Macy designs, implements and evaluates traumatic stress reduction programs, and psychosocial assessment and intervention projects in the United States, Netherlands, Norway, Palestine and Israel, Jordan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Burundi, Eritrea and South Africa.

Frank Grijalva: Frank Grijalva is the clinical programming consultant for Boys and Girls Home and Family Services of Iowa, Nebraska and Alaska. Eight years of experience as a marine mammal trainer for the US Navy created a behavioral foundation that evolved from animals to humans and psychology to public health. His focus is the development of multi-disciplinary, multi-modal continuums of care for at risk children.

Gang Connected Kids: Preventing Membership, Promoting Reentry II

This workshop will look at work being done in schools and in collaboration with law enforcement in addressing the problem of students “flirting” with gang membership and those already in gangs. It will present practical examples and case studies from schools and communities. The workshop will discuss the implications for building a stronger support system to help those youth involved in gun violence, aggression and/or gangs to return to a path of social, emotional and academic success with practical approaches.

PANELISTS:
Antonio Ennis

Dr. Jose Salgado: Principal of Umana Barnes Middle School, East Boston

Donald Stone

MODERATOR:
Meg Vallincourt