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Navigating Excellence - Parent Center Assistance & Collaboration Team
Region A E-News |
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Inspirational Quote
"Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things." ~ Robert Brault
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Message from Diana & Michele
 There is a growing body of research which shows there are many psychological benefits to gratefulness, including feeling happier and lowering stress, depression, and anxiety. Expressing genuine gratitude on a daily basis can improve physical health as well, by improving quality of sleep, cardiovascular health, and immune functions. So we will access those benefits by expressing our genuine gratitude to you! We are so thankful for the opportunity to work with each of you to help families of children with disabilities and youth advocate effectively for the services they need, and to improve the systems that serve them. We hope that you each have many reasons to be grateful and many opportunities to express that gratitude so that you, too, can benefit!
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Featuring...
PIC of DE: The Parent Information Center of Delaware will be having a Facebook Live on "Early Childhood: Ideas for Home Learning" at 1:00pm on Wednesday, December 2. Click here (or copy/paste address https://www.facebook.com/picofdel/ into your browser).
PIC of DE provides Facebook Live presentations nearly every week, typically at 1:00pm, on a wide variety of education and child-related topics. Read more.
PIC of NH: As we continue to navigate the unchartered territory of COVID-19 and special education, the topic of IEP meetings constantly pops up. We recently partnered with the NH School Administrators Association and the NH Association of Special Education Administrators to host the webinar, Working Together Remotely: Virtual IEP Meetings. Read more.
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Upcoming Events/Dates to Remember
Region A Drop-In Call: The next Region A Drop-In Call will take place on Tuesday, December 1, 10:00am - 12:00pm. Our regular calls take place on the first Tuesday of every month. Check your calendar invite for additional details. Join the call. Please let us know no later than Friday, November 26, if you have any agenda items.
Motivation in These Difficult Times - Letting Go of Expectations: On December 8 at 6:00pm, join CADRE and their very special guest, motivational speaker Meg Johnson, presented by the Utah Parent Center. Learn more and register here.
COVID-19 Drop-In Calls: The next call will be on Tuesday, December 15, 10:00am - 12:00pm. On these calls we will discuss what is happening in your state/territory/community, address any new developments, and identify any help you need that we can provide. Check your calendar invite for additional details. Join the call.
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Non-Profit Management Resources
7 Key Characteristics of a Successful Non Profit: Nonprofit organizations need to remain stable, relevant, and resilient in the face of up and down cycles of budget cuts and an increasingly changing landscape. Check out these 7 characteristics of successful nonprofits, from being agile and mission-focused, to being able to mobilize and inspire others, to continuously listening and improving. Find out more.
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Family-Centered Services Resources
Helping Families with Stress: Check out these tips from a presentation at the National Association for the Education of Young Children's conference on helping families deal with stress.
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Youth-Centered Services Resources
Helping Teens Deal with Stress: The American Academy of Pediatrics healthychildren.org website has a great resource for teens to create their own personal stress management plan.
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Staff Development Resources
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Absenteeism
5 Things You Need to Know About Student Absences During COVID-19: Absenteeism has long been a vexing and frustrating issue for educators. During COVID-19, the phenomenon has only grown more pressing. Check out 5 Things You Need to Know. |
Bi-lingual/LEP
The National Center on Educational Outcomes Translations of Selected Products: Selected publications of NCEO and affiliated projects have been translated into several languages. Learn more. |
Bullying
Bystanders to Bullying: Someone who witnesses bullying, either in person or online, is a bystander. Friends, students, peers, teachers, school staff, parents, coaches, and other youth-serving adults can be bystanders. With cyberbullying, even strangers can be bystanders. Youth involved in bullying play many different roles. Witnessing bullying is upsetting and affects the bystander, too. Bystanders have the potential to make a positive difference in a bullying situation by becoming an upstander. An upstander is someone who sees what happens and intervenes, interrupts, or speaks up to stop the bullying. Read more. |
Child Welfare
The 2019/2020 Prevention Resource Guide is designed to help individuals and organizations in every community strengthen families and prevent child abuse and neglect. The Resource Guide focuses on protective factors that build on family strengths to foster healthy child and youth development. It can be used along with the Protective Factors in Practice scenarios and the activity calendars to implement prevention strategies in your community.
Educational Supports for Youth in Foster Care: Check out these resources for youth in foster care and their foster parents:
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Cultural Competence
Significant Disproportionality: The Center for Parent Information and Resources (CPIR) has just released a new training module series on significant disproportionality of students in particular racial or ethnic groups in special education. This training module explains what disproportionality is, which students are most often affected, and the consequences disproportionality can and does have, especially on students with disabilities. What does IDEA require states, districts, and schools to do to monitor for disproportionality in special education programs? What happens in a state that finds significant disproportionality in the state or in any of its districts/LEAs? What correction actions must be taken? This module answers these questions.
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Data
Collecting and Analyzing Data: The Community Toolbox has an excellent section on collecting and analyzing data with a narrative, checklist examples, and a powerpoint presentation. |
Discipline & Positive Behavior Supports
Civil Rights Data Report release: Check out the Civil Rights Data Report regarding the reality that students with disabilities have higher rates of restraint and seclusion; 78% of those were students with disabilities who were disproportionately identified as Black male students.
We Have a Discipline Problem in Early Ed. What Are We Doing to Help Educators Fix It? Many of us have seen the disturbing and heart-wrenching videos of young children being handcuffed, removed from their classrooms, and pleading to stay at school. It's no coincidence that most of these stories and videos are of Black children. While such moments are infrequently caught on camera, the data show that the way we discipline young children, and children of color in particular, is a nationwide problem. Read more.
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Dropout Prevention
The Trauma of Pandemic School Disruption: This video explores the far-reaching implications of trauma related to school disruption for students, staffs, families, and the community at large. Watch the video. |
Early Childhood/Early Intervention
Determining A Child's Eligibility for Early Intervention Services Remotely: This resource includes guidance, considerations, and resources for state staff and local practitioners who are determining Part C eligibility remotely. As a result of COVID-19, many states are having to determine a child's eligibility for Part C services remotely using a variety of approaches such as teleconference, videoconference, and sharing information and video synchronously and asynchronously. Therefore, effective state policies, procedures, and practices are important to appropriately identify children eligible for Part C services. The resource also includes three tables of assessment tools with potential for remote administration. Read more. |
Education Reform/ESSA
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, including Computer Science: STEM initiatives Charting a Course for Success: America's Strategy for STEM Educators: In an ever-changing, increasingly complex world, it's more important than ever that our nation's youth are prepared to bring knowledge and skills to solve problems, make sense of information, and know how to gather and evaluate evidence to make decisions. These are the kinds of skills that students develop in science, technology, engineering, and math-disciplines collectively known as STEM. If we want a nation where our future leaders, neighbors, and workers have the ability to understand and solve some of the complex challenges of today and tomorrow, and to meet the demands of the dynamic and evolving workforce, building students' skills, content knowledge, and fluency in STEM fields is essential. We must also make sure that, no matter where children live, they have access to quality learning environments. A child's zip code should not determine their STEM fluency. Read more. |
Family Engagement
Parent Leadership Indicators Framework: The Parent Leadership Indicators Framework provides a set of descriptive indicators that parent-leadership organizations can use to self-assess their practices, measure program impact, and improve communication with parents, partners, and the public. Check it out. |
Grandparents as Caregivers
Members of the Family Integrity Campaign Respond to Introduction of the FAMILIES Act that Provides Alternatives to Incarceration for Parents: On Thursday, November 19, Se. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA-7) introduced the FAMILIES Act, which aims to divert parents from prison and would instead keep them united with their children through a comprehensive community supervision program that provides resources, services and training to parents and children. Read more. |
Health
Top 10 Things We Know About Young Children and Health Equity...and Three Things We Need to Do with What We Know: The Build Initiative: Strong Foundations for our Youngest Children, prepared this resources on young children and health equity. Check it out. |
IDEA/Special Education
45th Anniversary of the IDEA: November 29 marks the 45th anniversary of the IDEA, which was previously known as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act and was signed into law by President Gerald Ford in 1975. Join the Department of Education to celebrate this landmark anniversary the week of November 30. Read more. |
Immigrant Issues
Civil Rights Advocates Win Reversal of Discriminatory City Utility Policies in Court Settlement: City of LaGrange, GA, ends local policies that had unlawful discriminatory impact on Black and Latinx residents. Read more. |
Inclusion
Inclusive Schools Week is an annual event held each year during the first full week in December. Since its inception in 2001, Inclusive Schools Week has celebrated the progress that schools have made in providing a supportive and quality education to an increasingly diverse student population, including students who are marginalized due to disability, gender, socio-economic status, cultural heritage, language preference, and other factors. The Week also provides an important opportunity for educators, students and parents to discuss what else needs to be done in order to ensure that their schools continue to improve their ability to successfully educate all children. Check it out. |
Juvenile Delinquency/Juvenile Justice
Juvenile Injustice: Justice for youth often depends on your address, color of your skin, who arrests you, who is assigned your case. Read more. |
LGBTQ
LGBTQ Youth and Schools Resources Library: The ACLU has a resource library on LGBTQ youth and schools. Check it out. |
Mental Health
2020 Children's Mental Health Report: Telehealth in an Increasingly Virtual World: The coronavirus pandemic has been hard on kids and teens everywhere - especially those who were already dealing with mental health challenges. Telehealth (which uses technology to deliver healthcare remotely) has emerged as a promising treatment option for children's mental health. Read more (English and Spanish).
Four Tips to Help Manage Burnout: Across the country, COVID-19 has changed our lives, including how and where we work. For many of us, the line between work and home has been blurred (or erased altogether) and most of our communications have been online instead of in person. With increasing uncertainty around us, it's crucial that we make mental health in the workplace a priority. Learn more.
Resiliency and the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Hidden Strengths of Those with Lived Experience of Mental Health Conditions Tip Sheet: Some of us deal with stress better than others and one of the keys may be in our resiliency - something many of those with lived mental health experience have built up over time. Get the tip sheet.
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Military Families & Youth
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Native American
Celebrating Native American Heritage Month: Dos and Don'ts: In this op-ed, Ruth Hopkins, a Dakota/Lakota Sioux writer, biologist, attorney, and former tribal judge, offers advice on avoiding offensive stereotypes and being a better ally to Native nations. Read more.
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| Parent/Family Engagement (and Youth!)
Storytelling: Activities from the "Reading at Home" Workshops Resource: Nearly all families enjoy telling stories together. This resource, provided by the Academic Development Institute School Community Network, has great ideas for families to use storytelling at home to help children learn, including tips for active listening. Read more.
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| Poverty
Out of Date Metric to Determine Poverty: Why does the current metric to determine poverty drastically underestimate the number of people, including children, living in poverty? Find out.
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| Remote Learning/School Reopening
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Social-Emotional Learning
10 Ways Parents Can Bring Social-Emotional Learning Home: Now that parents and caregivers are overseeing learning at home, we need to ensure that students continue to build and practice social and emotional skills in meaningful ways, especially when distractions and anxieties from current events and in their personal communities are at an all-time high. Read more. |
Technology
How to Recruit New Members for Your Association on Social Media: Written by Findjoo, this is the second post in a series of three about best practices in digital marketing and fundraising for membership organizations and associations. Read more.
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Transition to Adult Life/Youth
Finishing College Classes During COVID-19: This is a tough time for everyone. College students have been asked to leave campus and finish the semester remotely, which may not be something they are used to. While this is a hard adjustment for most college students, this change may be more difficult for young adult college students with mental health conditions. Read more.
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ABOUT THE REGION A PARENT TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE CENTER
The Navigating Excellence-Parent Assistance and Collaboration Team (NE-PACT), the Region A Technical Assistance Center, provides technical assistance to federally-funded parent centers -- Parent Training and Information Centers (PTIs) and Community Parent Resource Centers (CPRCs) -  located in the states of CT-AFCAMP, CT-CPAC, DC-AJE, DE-PIC, MD-PPMD, ME-MPF, MA-FCSN, NH-PIC, NJ-SPAN, NJ-ASCF, NY-AFC, NY-CIDA, NY-LIAC, NY-UWS, NY-Starbridge, NY-INCLUDEnyc, NY-Sinergia, NY-PNWNY, PA-HUNE, PA- ME, PA-PEAL, PR-APNI, RI-RIPIN, VI-DRVI and VT-VFN. These Parent Centers are independent non-profit organizations. We also provide support to emerging parent centers and parent organizations serving families of children with or at risk of being identified as having disabilities. In addition, we work with early intervention and education agencies (local, state and federal level) seeking information regarding best practices in involving parents of children with disabilities in systems improvement.
The center activities are specifically designed to:
- Enhance the capacity of parent centers to provide effective services to families of children with special needs and to work effectively with their states to improve special education and early intervention systems; and,
- Facilitate their connections to the larger technical assistance network that supports research-based training, including educating parents about effective practices that improve results for children with disabilities. For more information click here.
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