seven and we're thrilled to have you here with us today you are also director of frederick douglas community center and we're going to talk a little bit about your role on c b seven am about what frederick douglass community center were very excited that  spin asked me to talk about middle school programs in the neighborhood really looking at th and up to one hundred and six what programs were available what were some of the things that our middle schoolers need what were the gaps i've gone to one of their committ meetings talks about it that i was brought back in to talk about what are some of the funding gap so what are things that not for profits need in order to meet those gaps to provide high quality programming and it was under her guidance and  not really knowing what that meant but i said yes you know and here i am is the st faced chair and you know i feel like enjoying the work feel like having a voice for part of our community that doesn't always have the voice around the table we're thrilled that you got involved many different types of communities many different types of people socioeconomic status housing and all of that and i think we need to start looking at the higher part of our districts so the families that live in douglass houses the families that are living in single room occupancy is what's who they need what resources to they have how to their school resources affect their learning and their children's abilities to thrive and succeed when they don't necessarily have the same resources as some of our other schools so one thing that i really would like us to look at is what are the needs of that community what resources do we have where is the advocacy that we need to put into that community so that other people are on board with us and supporting it as well as looking at our schools and our education system and what we can do from some of our higher succeeding schools to implement in there that may not take p c m money or other type stuff that we can do to really help the children and the families get what they all smily need so amy i understand you're a social worker tell us about your journey from social worker to being director of the children's  society i got into so sure as i said i wanted to be one of those people in the trenches that was making a difference that was advocating that was helping children some families and i started my career and family services and running afterschool programs and then after touring that for about eight years i thought maybe i want to see more clinical work maybe i really want to use this make a difference in the mental health aspects because i saw that so many of my children are after school programs their mental health issues sometimes was detriment to their growth and their learning because it wasn't really being addressed or it wasn't getting the services because of many different things insurance things like that so i went into the clinical world for a little while i loved it but my heart was back and communities and that type work and i had done some consulting work with children stayed at frederick douglas in seven and i loved it and i've been trying to get back there for quite some time and there was a vacancy and i applied for it and i wound up back into what i truly love about so sure has the ability to help many to look at it from the st perspective and to be able to build programs that impacts and bring change and how long you've been there is to route through two thousand and eleven for crisis time now any particular programs or children that stand out for you well like i said when i started in seven i was working with a bunch of th graders who were receiving a program that was called mass pass at the time and it was really supposed to help build their academic skills and i was outside of the after school time and those kids now are in college they come back they visit may some of them have come back and volunteered for us so if feels good when you have those opportunities to see what you came what you fell in love with and why you wanted to go back to it still be part of the community and still be part of you and i think any child who has that aha moment where you see the light bulb go off and then because they've been able to accomplish something new whether it's a math problem read a word or kick the ball in the kickball game that's basis i am in fall to in supporting our early childhood program i'm much more involved in our school age program the early charles moore so we have an early childhood program started to it goes through universal pre k we have it's a wonderful program we use a curriculum called tools of the mind which really helps young children learn how to play and sort example if that is their kids will come in and they will create with crayons and pictures and sometimes just lines what their play plan is for the day so what are they going to do for the day and then they actually have to implement it so we're teaching them some serious skills that can help them be successful in college and beyond that as early as two years olds so that's really it's a wonderful program it's also seem baser every month has a different theme and the rooms get totally thought up in the teams i mean we have created toilets at of box is in i c u unit fo babies i mean they really the teachers are amazingly to wonderful job it really making sure the kids understand that theme so it's a beautiful program and then we also have our school age her friend which is kindergarten through th grade i am more involved with them in terms of working on the social our kids creating curriculum that helps to develop those things as well as creating literacy curriculum so about two and a half years ago we were really struggling to understand why are kids w reading so below and what was going on with the statewide exams when you have a rd grader taking in there so reading out a kindergarten level they're not going to do well so we actually went to the schools in the district so we asked them what they do in terms of their reading what sussman say years they told us so when we brought it back and we have implemented it for the last two years and what other radical thing that we have done is we no longer group our children by age or grade we group our children by their reading level so you could have an eight year olds with a five year olds the thought behind that was was that we need to teach the skills to get that child to thrive to the next great level and eventually be on target in their reading and the best way to use that is you have to teach the skills at the level and what's really wonderful about it is that the children who are older are mentoring those younger children they don't feel they are whole i mean the speaker grow they feel like their mentor is they feel like they have some experience they take ownership of it and it's really thrived it's reading levels are going up consistently and it's efficiency that any behavioral issues we really had has dropped dragger sickly because kids aren't being asked to perform at a level that they're not ready to do what's also wonderful about this program is because we assess them three times here we're able to move them to the next group if they're reading levels got up up so working able to really kind of keep on pushing them up as well as working with the parents to understand why literacy is so important and why it's so important that we help to build their social most of all skills because that we know is what leads to academic success and success in life so is there parental involvement we have a lot of parental five minute men in our early childhood we have a parent council that meets on a monthly basis they talk about what their needs are they do a lot of our programming and our planning and fundraising for that program in the school it's much more in we do two monthly parent events where children have the opportunity to science fairs so the kids are teaching the parents about how to make supply of a read a thaw and we always have a movie night where we do popcorn in a movie you know we have a fitness night we do a march madness you know all of that type stuff in its emissions who we support our families so if they have problems with their schools or they have they feel like their child is ready for an individual's education plan or they've got one and they don't understand it we really advocate with them and we will go to the schools with them to help make sure that their children are getting what they need and you have volunteers we too we have a lot of corporate volunteers who are two wonderful events like we've had dr seuss days we've had there's a great book  elephant and picky it's a serious by michael williams they've come and read you know books like that and then ask questions as well as in the past we've had a lot of high school students who have come to volunteer and to do our children our work without a knife so that's really wonderful years surrounding or the majority of our students are from the frederick douglass houses but also the surrounding area around you know i think our early childhood population has shifted a little bit but our school age population continues to be mostly from there your children go to different schools yes we pick up for our afterschool program for different schools plus we have number of them that have bus the children to us for the afterschool program and in our middle school program we can have up to twenty different middle schoolers middle schools that our kids are coming from so i mean you have some amazing program series or anything else you'd like to implement oh wow  i think that one thing i would love to implement is more weekend programming for families so we've had the opportunity to host a mommy and me class recently and i'd love to do more things like that where we can get some of the younger kids more involved in the weekends and allow for our older kids to have leadership and mentoring with those younger kids and then also think about our alumni and how they can get more involved and keep in touch with them we have a lot of our alumni that live in the neighborhood that we're definitely saw in touch with and you know how how they can be part of the process and be part of it and also i think another thing that i'd love to do is more parent education programs so that what are their rights you know terms of education or what needs to they need so that they feel they can be advocates for their children or supporters of doing homework do you have any male parenting classes we don't currently have any male parenting classes we definitely encourage our fathers to pick up be part of the process but it's maybe that's one of the visions for the future and you assume summer programs yes so we run our early childhood programs all year round but we run our afterschool program becomes our summer camp so it's a seven week program  friday it is theme base this summer we're doing africa we're going to be traveling to africa we're going to be tasting food from africa making music art i mean it's going to be real exciting i'm really happy about this and then we also have a wonderful opportunity for where fifty of our kids get on a bus every single day and go out to our camp on staten island so they have the ability to be in grassy field swim every day you know have a different experience than being in and you know our community center and then we also have children's aid has a partnership with alvin alley and we have children who go to their program which is amazing do they perform development for school age and then it's private funding it's other types of koretz that may come in we need to have an affiliation with the boys and girls club of america so we'll you know get a grant to implement a curriculum or something along those lines so it's it's mostly city money if you have a wish list i mean of course everybody has a wish list i mean i think the biggest wishless is to be able to have a social worker other than myself you're the only down there yes  you know we have great partnerships and they're wonderful we have a great clinic within children say that we utilize but it would be really nice to have that and i think another wishless is to be able to five the resources and th high to train our part time staff so that there alternately getting what they need to get to built themselves in order to be stronger role models for the school children so clearly weren't seven as the district needs and much it hurts every year a playground here i have something with your opinion we actually part of our community said through the back of it has a full court basketball and a child's playground so we use it all the time the little kids are out there we're out there all summer long on friday afternoons we see you what we call all camp activities and it's all themes around our theme so last year a scene with dinosaurs we did it science for stop we did dinosaur really as we see it search for the time a sore i mean you know it's an opportunity for everybody in camp whether they're five or four teams to come together and do healthy competition and you know seeing cheers into all of that so it's a really wonderful opportunity to have it we also have for the last three years has hosted the mayor's program open doors which was created to get seen a tourist off the streets at night in the summer insisting places and to build relationships with the police department so we are open from six o'clock to eleven o'clock for the weekdays and three o'clock to eleven during the weekends where we're doing basketball tournaments we're touring resume writing we  classes we sit up i think there was makeup classes i mean they just did so many different things that it's an open door the teachers came as they wanted to comment it was a really wonderful opportunity which also had the back yard very busy because they are playing a lot  back there until police come and play with yes they do we actually two years ago we had a wonderful police officer who spent the entire summer helping a student write her college applications had our college it was a me so i can you tell us about maybe one or two success stories like some of the kids that come to you they're very young and maybe they're a little busy misty was so whatever and they blossom when i got there and two thousand and eleven i met a middle schooler who was shy a little awkward at least struggling through school wasn't really sure what or where she wanted to go the one thing that she knew was she loved our center and she'd been with us since early childhood and you know over the course the time we helped her with high school helped her get inside a school we helped her with her work we provided services for her when she needed in tutor tutoring you know and then when it came time for college weeks at the same thing you know we got are set up and ready to to school in the end she really like it it wasn't the school for her and she was able to come back and say erin i think i wanted to this you know i saw her two weeks ago actually she's getting ready to graduate when she still phones here is her time with us when she's off from school she knows what she wants to do what he had i want to do she wants to get involved in sports management and so you know helping kids develop skills through sports which is wonderful and you know it's great to see how much she's grown to see this like person is confident now and she talks to you and and has a plaid still less you is a good plaid but that's ok you know it's really it's wonderful and she gives her time to us and she comes back to us all the time and you know it's really wonderful the kids love her also because they kind of look up so she lives in the you know where you know on the other side of that is there a lot of gang activity and how have you worked have you with gangs i think that the neighborhood has been incredibly respectful of our space i think that there is an imaginary line that they know not to cross  think you know has there been violence in the community of course you know is there anything that we've particularly done to stop the violence no other fans he to our kids healthy choices healthy decisions we talk about what it means to be you know what it's like to be in a gang how do you prevent that how do you stand up for yourself what does it look like you know so we start that very young but a lot of the members of the community have a lot of respect for mosques we know them my most of my staff of been there for god knows how long so they knew them as children too so it's a different kind of relationship when you have so i mean all in all we feel pretty safe from where we are right now you mention that you have a lot of children coming from different schools tell us a little the relationship you have with the school like different child is having a problem at school or a child having  problems with her short suit usually when we pick up the children there is either the teacher is bringing them down my staff will connect with the teacher or the teacher may connect with us and say listen susie is having a really bad day today we're not really sure what's going on but just wanted to let you know where she's at you know if we see concerns in terms of their grades or in terms of stories they've told us we always connect with the parent will say ok this is what we learned today we will connect with the school we feel that it's important or as the parent it wants us to but we really are in many ways a carrier for me from the school day to us to the parent because we're really the one picking up the child from it and we hope that secret and we make sure that we do a good job with it and you know where a parent allows us to we will talk to the school about some of our concerns so in your example where since he was having a bad day and school you'll see how and the kids can either put their name posted on it or klopp it and all of our staff outside as soon as they walk and how was your day what was going on we also start our day with something we called meet up which is that opportunity for the kids to talk about their day what was a success of the day what was something that they may want to change for tomorrow or something they need help with so we really have a lot of opportunity to know what's on their minds you also know success with certain groups of kids as opposed to just one child yeah i mean i think that changing the way in which we've done our leader literacy program and being able to use the same assessment that the schools are using which the kids are familiar with the parents are familiar with it's made the school its program incredibly more successful because we have unbelievable data to know what a child needs and then to be able to create curriculum and individualized plans to meet that child's needs i have a really wonderful literacy specialists who was a child a teacher who really is able to take that information and say ok sue say we're having trouble with comprehension so we're going to start with very simple books i want you to read the sentence tell me what the sentence means or if you're having trouble fluent say we're going to do more of reading cards or you know let's read two sentences helping the child move along or it's not a firing is that a phonics issue is it other issues that are happening so i think that spend huge success for us the kids feel better we're actually really a trusting their needs and they are to felting some really strong social emotional learning through it also because they're battling their challenges rather than running away from it so there are other children's aid society programs in the city do you are you in touch with them do you guys meet the sounds like you because it's phenomenal children's aid is phenomenal  serve about fifty thousand children use in families throughout the year in four targeted neighborhoods you know we help children in poverty to succeed and thrive we know that that's not a single stop shot it's multiple things that happen so you know the hope is that your kid goes to one of your early childhood sites that moves on to your school age to adolescence that were really building the skills and the necessary resources to get that care from cradle to college we to have a lot of meetings where we all come together we're incredibly supportive what's wonderful about being part of a very large agency that does amazing work is that anywhere you say we need mental health services we've got a you have a child child welfare issues we have someone to talk to about that we have a family that might need profound of support we have that we have all of these things out are just suppose souls that are really wonderful to work with and strong colleagues who have say can help you with the family our middle school for a time this sort of theme and they enjoyed it many of them had not seen the original jurassic park so it was very fascinating for them to read the book and then see the original movie not the version that they know i also really like i mean you have the basics like very hungry caterpillar is a great one for little kids we read the diary of anne frank recently also which was a great one our middle school kids read chasing abraham lincoln oh we love sat one that was really fascinating to see it read in that way because there's so much that you know but then there was so much you just said no we really enjoyed that one any time we read a book with a child or a group of children it is a guided read and we read a page we ask questions about it we may not read the next page we may say all right what's this picture tell us what do we predict going to happen in this story how is that going to help us get to the ad so we're really teaching children how to do a picture walk of the bomb as well so think about who are all these characters what's going to happen with some of my favorite activities we see around books also is asking kids to write alternate endings  so what else do you think could have happened in this story or to change a character what would you have changed about that character and it's really fun to see their imagination and what they kind of held true in the story  our technology in terms of tools so in other words if we are trying to talk about a story we may use a graphic swallow a computer that's talked about the plot the characters the setting and all of that so we teach that type stuff on the computer as well as we use on the computers a ton of educational curriculum one of the great ones that we're using is called math logics every child gets a lock and they can play at home they can play it with us also use technology to look at old music videos we have to old news clips really using it as a resource not necessarily a straighter or a facebook we also to a lot  science experiments we also have a wonderful call unary program which our kids learn how to cook we use math science children's aid so it's a wonderful in june it's called the go chefs competition where all of the sites that have call it area programs actually compete with judges with winner is it's the most amazing find the experience of the last two years fred has hosted this here we're at another site but all come back to us next year and i'd like to thank stuff that's amazing community board