welcome to education in our community this show is about life well learning teaching and mentoring an ongoing process for every part of the family and also for citizens where everywhere we need it as a family but also as individuals the parents and grandparents the children the relatives the n c a uncles so it's an inclusive concern about involvement in education in the community we are so privileged to have as our guest today mr michael noble's he works as a very instrumental person call director of youth services and he works with the institute for the advanced study of black family life and culture incorporated that into it he has been around for a number of years could you just tell us a little bit about the work that you do there just in my position my job is to look at programs that the institute is currently working on and make sure that they have a component that has development for the youth and currently we have a program called the enhanced family fabric and what their program does is we work with families in the community we have village style meetings twice a week and we teach them about african american african culture and show them how using african american african culture they can develop skills for alcohol and drug prevention in that i make sure that there are components for youth development the youth how to navigate where they are near lives to incorporate again african american african culture to allow them to have tools for s work rather the children who are going through various challenges in her at risk are being raised in homes that don't have their father the father is not in the home and for some of the children their father is accessible but there's no connection and so i wanted to work with how do you get the father involved to give this child a better sense of wholeness because we all know that we had two parents and there's a sense of completeness when i don't have access to both parents and so being a single father having raised my child i saw the importance and i saw the value in how my son learn to navigate the education system his peers all the things that children go through and so i wanted to try to help the children and i came in contact with to give them as much as they could have so they could go out into the world better wade yes he is the founder of the institute for the study of the black family yes that's correct because i would imagine that he's worked with fathers over the years as well exactly  see could you tell us a little bit about the work that you did in terms of developing programs the well being programs what i would do for two when i working at the school with the school system within the i was with attendance academics behavior but it was then i would look at what can i do to help them to give them support to one want them to do better in school to help them want to become better people there are  people so i would develop look at how can i do that with the information and analysis that i've learned from dr noble whose research a lot of what i do i use the research that he has done over the years and i take that and then i use that to implement a program and i try to tailor it to that particular group cannot believe that one program will solve the problem for all children even if they are the same ethnicity the same a the you're saying i was looking at a book about her mother and then the mother had written a little paragraph in there about how she worked as a teacher this unique characteristics of children who were angry and hostile sometimes she said she would go into a closet with the students so that they could have privacy is that was also hard to get privacy and environment where everybody is kind of at each other you know creating problems for one another yes because they're so angry and themselves children are brought here through to people if you only have access to one there's a part of you that you feel you will learn to realize it as a child that you feel is missing when we become adults they get that sense i'm missing something there's a part of me that i don't know about we learn that as adults but as children they go through that and they don't know how to handle that emotion and so it comes out negative so for a child to have access to their father and i say access because sometimes it's just not possible whether he lives in another state some case where the father might be incarcerated whatever circumstance or that child does not have access to that their father but when they get they aren't and we share with the mother or their uncles or their older siblings so they have that other person to talk to and that other person deep in a certain sense can give them a different viewpoint and that's always helpful for a child so now the child has  extra tools for their tool bag in the navigating life the other piece i think is important is when the father is involved even before and i use this because a lot of our children are growing up in homes without the father in the home but the father can come by and spend time with them that child also gets another level of love because now i know my mother loves me i kind of take the effort randi but for a child whether it's a son or daughter now i have another person who is showing me love and under the circumstances is showing that they're going to do whatever it takes to show me that love because they have to get off work and come over here where they have to do whatever to do to come see me so now i get this extra level of fitness special and i think those are the two most important things that fathers bring to the child when they're not in the home so how does the presence or lack  father affect a child's education well it goes back to that child feeling whole if i go to school and there's something about me that i'm not i don't quite feel whole about and even if i don't understand but by those terms and i'm not bringing my my for self to school and if i don't bring my self to school i can't give my full self to my education because there's something over that is pulling at me and it's that absence and it's for some children they develop a sense of abandonment because the father left they may not know the circumstances but there's a sense of a that can hinder a child from being able to come school focus you know some teach some children think about their father and they wonder where years why doesn't come see me with the situation so they can't  talking about our topic is about the importance of it but i was thinking of how to make it work effectively you have to ask hard questions sometimes you have to ask the parents or the child where is your brother your father home and you have to also be able to recognize what the issues this child is having and sometimes you have a child who you know as educators you see a child you know the child is very smart but there is something holding them back you may have to talk to the peer ask the parents to come in if one parent comes in ask where the other parent is that's a hard question because people can get defensive and depending on the circumstances with let's say the mother and father you may get a negative response and you may get a response that he's not needed here well if that's the response you get from asking this parent imagine what that child gets when they ask where my father is and what might be what that parent might be telling them for get that response then do you do some kind of focusing on how to deal with that what i try to do is i try to in a very casual comforting way find out more about why the father is not there and depending on the relationship i have with that parent try to get their parent to understand the importance of the father and encourage that parent to include the father in this process whether i'm working as an educator as a counsellor depending on the capacity i'm working in trying to get a parent to see the value of their father in bringing her father into that so have you been able to deal with  parent who might feel a little hostility have you been able to deal with that yes and get experience that more than the other so then you develop ongoing communication with that parent that's a case by case it really is case by case because sometimes you don't want to push you push too much then the support that you're getting from that period to do the work you're trying to do can get cut off when the parents are you know what i so i try to work with them as if i'm a family member so i try to try to take the clinical out of it the social worker out of it make it more family like ok and then i share my own experiences i've shared my own experience of being a single parent and you know different things about my life to let them know i'm not coming here looking down on you i'm coming here to help you and i'm coming here help you could i know the value of a father being involved because one m father was involved and i am an involved father and so i'm not talking because they say that's what is supposed to be i know from personal experience well that's great because i think so often people can be hostile because that's they feel they have anger yes yes yes so father involvement is important to the well being of children but is there any benefit to the father for being involved in the lives of the children of course but is that benefit the benefit for a father to be involved in his children it also gives him a self of responsibility what sense of responsibility because for some fathers they're not allowed to be in the child's life and in my experience is most fathers really love their children they just based on whatever the circumstance was they were not allowed to show that and then they become resentful and then they don't want to they don't want to fight anymore they don't want to fight they don't want to go through that i was a father with my oldest child when me and her mother split up she made it hard for me to be in her life so as a young man i gave up i want to fight  how much it was how how valuable that was for me to continue to fight fortunately i was able to rebuild their issue with my daughter who was an adult now where for some fathers they don't get that opportunity they  want to fight so they leave and the child this is when a father's allowed to be in a child's life they can see as they see the fruits of their labor and they can become involved in their child and they can see how they are contributing to the development of another person and for a father feels good this is my child especially you know this is my son yes and i'm helping him become a man well this is my daughter and i'm helping her understand how to navigate the world you know or how to look out for the guys that's important fathers and fathers get that opportunity most of the time they will take it and they will step up to the plate these have to be given  opportunity and also they have to they need some work too with their own issues because some of them didn't have their father exactly so then it's like well i don't know what to do i don't know how to be a dad i don't have a dad but you have to support him in understand that there's some instinctive things you do know how to do as a father you just have to let those things happen in the family members have to support his efforts right because i was listening to what you were saying there's a generational factor there that says that this has gone on for quite a number of years and i would and denying then that says the mother is a part of the problem i would say part of the problem she is not aware of how much she can how much she can influence the solution oh right  terrible parents or wives there's some people who are horrible that their personal issues when it comes to their children they get the children get unconditional love and we have to understand that that's part of it i can't judge my child's mother as a mother based on our relationship because she wasn't my mother so i have to allow her to be a mother to her child allow her to be exactly what you say i  should not working now a woman should not judge this man's ability to be a father based on his inability to be a good friend or a partner so there are two different roles the role that you would actually play with a father involvement might be developing the mother's capacity to work with the father exactly the father needs capacity building to work with the mother they both need that exactly there's a lot of layers to it later too and when there has been some sort of dysfunctional separation between the mother and father there has to be some teaching or coaching on how to co parent i don't have to like you to co parent people work with you have a coworker for years when i like them but you respect them for the work they do what they bring to the teen that you're on so parents have to do the same thing if they're not in a situation where they're still together because the main goal is how do we work together for the benefit of the child so then you are teaching a togetherness strategy because i think so often people don't get any training in how to work with others exactly and it could be a family member it doesn't have to be a father a mother it could be another relative who needs that exactly so it sounds like your work is really transformative yes it is  needs to be and i say this because as a service providers and i could be in any industry where you're working with children with if you're going into homes if you're teacher if you're a counselor to school much anybody working with children who have to deal with them on a more personal basis meaning you're bringing them a service that leaves the center or the school actually goes into the whole you should try and encourage father involvement asked the child to invite their father to have parents don't say bring your parents bring your mother and father because you have to start giving them their language if children grow up and they haven't heard word that we call their i want to call dad i want their to come see me perform i want dad to come to this event and we as the service providers also have to understand the importance of fathers because if we don't see them as important we can suggest to the to the parents or to the families that the fathers are important so that has to be part of the work so what can the community do to help bring more attention to fathers i think that the community should look more to having events that are focusing on fathers like you mentioned you saw a picture where it was a father and a daughter you know there there should be those tiny vans happening you know they should be a lot of activity around father's day you know list do some active is where you're you know bring your father to this event or recognizing fathers in the community had a conversation with a friend recently of how much the media promotes mother's day and how much money is spent on mother's day father's day is combined with graduation lot of attention a lot of money and so that kind of supports that mothers are here dads are here and i think they should get equal even though in our society there are a lot of single mothers but there's also a lot of fathers that want to be involved and that are involved so we have to change our thinking about fathers just in general we have started this show about fatherless boys and the that's why many are because in slavery fathers were denied that opportunity where they also were taken away taken away they were taken away and shortly after slavery fathers had to leave their families because they had to go elsewhere look at the fact that he's not there and so there's become you know after slavery it became ok for fathers not to be there and then through other systems within the government then it was fathers can't be in a home  think the nation needs to be doing about it i think the families the family the families i really believe it starts in the home the families need start to recognize that these fathers are important and if each family recognizes that then it grows if we go to the government and expect them to do it that's not their concern if you heard president obama talk about the role of the father he's a little bit about it and how that is such an important thing to do exactly also that is that a national level it is but we as our communities we need to start to recognize it in the home meaning the grandparents who are taking care of children don't bad mouth the father don't talk bad about the fog in front of the children you don't plant those seeds in that child's mind that their father is bad don't plant that's the seed the seeds yes so it back had been nurtured but then you mentioned seeds when we first started the show you say about the seeds so i was explaining that in my role in the in the community in the work i do i believe my role is to plant seeds see so let someone else make it grow and then someone else comes behind me this is a group effort ok i'm not going to solve the problem i'm not going to meet each other to solve their problems so you kind of put out this information a bulletin that helps people to know what the issue is yes and how important it is yes so how are you doing in that area getting the word out i don't think i'm doing pretty good how do you do that just by talking to people i take the work that i've done in my experiences and i give again service providers and people who are working with the chil n tools of how to get fathers involved and how to engage the father but sometimes that can be very hard to make the audience reach you and find out how to do get connect yes and yes resources to help with this issue because i think it is a national issue but you definitely in the bay area we could benefit from it as well yes thank you a lot of what you're doing thank you is there any closing comment that you'd like to share as we wrap up i don't