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Youth Art Show Sparkled at Museum of Museums
Young Women Empowered!
PRAY AWAY on Netflix
From the brilliant director (and my dear friend) Kristine Stolakis, comes PRAY AWAY, a new documentary film about survivors and ex-leaders of the so-called “conversion therapy” movement. This incredible, heartbreaking film chronicles the “ex gay” movement’s rise to power, its unscientific influence, and its legacy of profound harm.
Watch Pray Away on August 3, only on Netflix.
Educational Justice Starts with Equitable Family Engagement
By Riddhi Divanji, Ella Shahn, and Sydney Parker, foundry10
Whether conducting a home visit or teaching virtually, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced teachers, school administrators, and youth-serving organizations unprecedented access to the home lives of their students. This intimate blending of school and home can feel invasive at times, but is also a meaningful opportunity to build deeper relationships with families who are part of historically marginalized social groups in school communities.
To learn more about how to engage with low-income, POC, immigrant, and world-language speaking families during COVID, many school administrators and organizations across the country are using surveys to assess each family’s needs and preferences. But not all surveys are created equal. Far too often, families give their time in hopes of contributing to positive change in their school communities, but rarely get to see the final data or their words turned into action.
“Part of the reason that there’s so much fatigue with answering anything — whether it’s a survey collecting data from families or a conversation — is that they have experienced time and time again nothing happening as a result of them sharing their challenges,” said Dr. Ann Ishimaru, associate professor at the University of Washington School of Education and author of Just Schools.
Ishimaru and UW researchers Jondou Chen and Aditi Rajendran collaborated with the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition (SESEC), local schools, caregivers, community organizations, and other stakeholders to design an equitable family engagement survey for Southeast Seattle schools. The survey was adapted from a previous co-design process the UW researchers had developed with input from community leaders across the region. Foundry10 research coordinators Riddhi Divanji and Ella Shahn supported the Southeast Seattle effort through data collection and analysis support.
Ishimaru spoke with Divanji about family engagement and equitable survey design collaborations with families and communities during COVID-19 remote learning. Here are a few takeaways from their conversation that may be valuable for researchers, school administrators, youth-serving organizations, and educators looking to build equitable family engagement into their professional practice.
Seattle’s Child: Jan/Feb 2019
When the sun doesn’t shine and it’s too wet to play, and you’re stuck in the house on a cold, wet day, it’s time to get creative with paint, glue and clay! Here’s how three local families and artists make the most of Seattle’s rainy season.
Click here to view the full issue of the magazine!
Art Director: Boo Davis // Photographer: Joshua Huston // Managing Editor: Sydney Parker
To subscribe, click here.
Should you put your kids’ photos on social media? Read this first
Photo: Portia Smith
While expecting her first baby, Redmond mom Sarah Fong assumed that she would one day post precious photos of her child on Facebook and Instagram just like everyone else in her social network. But after her daughter arrived, Fong reconsidered. A number of family members were randomly sharing photos of other relatives’ children on social media without permission. She realized that once you post a photo online, you lose control over it. “I didn’t want some weird creeper using her picture for lewd and salacious acts,” says Fong.
Her concerns may sound paranoid to some, but they aren’t unfounded. On any given day, over 17,000 devices in Washington state are being used by predators to trade images of children. The Child Rescue Coalition (CRC), a nonprofit organization that tracks over one million unique pre-pubescent abuse image and video files traded on the Internet every day, reports that child predators actively seek out popular hashtags such as #bathtime, #pottytraining, #nakedkids and #toddlerbikini to find photos of children in states of undress. Unfortunately, with the rise of the internet, pedophiles are now able to easily trade photos, tips and techniques on how to seduce and lure children into sexual encounters. A secondary consequence of this horrifying anonymous social sharing is that it gives the offenders the mistaken impression that this behavior is normal and therefore acceptable.
“The demographic of the child predator has shifted from the creepy old man in the basement to young men between the ages of 17 and 36 years old,” says SPD Internet Crime Against Children Task Force Commander Mike Edwards. “Often these men are married or in a relationship and have professional careers.”
Fans of the Longest Shortest Time will love ‘Weird Parenting Wins’
Hillary Frank
Before I decided to create a human being inside of my body, I needed a few questions answered: Where do your organs go when the baby moves in? Should you want to eat your placenta? Will I die? Is a doula something I’m supposed to be wearing? What’s the difference between colostrum and meconium? Will the baby come out without a birth playlist?
Attempting to ease my fears about becoming a parent, my mother reassured me that birth was easy — and life with a newborn? Pure bliss. I wasn’t buying it. I cast aside my secondhand copy of “What to Expect,” closed the terrifying WebMD tabs, and turned to The Longest Shortest Time (LST), a parenting podcast with real stories and diverse experiences.
Executive producer and original host of the show, Hillary Frank created the podcast in 2010 after surviving a traumatic birth injury and weeks of sleepless nights with a newborn. During that dark period, a good friend had advised her: “These first few months are the longest shortest time. Remember that. They go on forever. And then they’re over.”
Raven Juarez Teaches Kids to Express Their Feelings Through Adventures in Art
Raven Juarez. Photo: Joshua Huston
Raven Juarez first developed an interest in art while drawing on a yellow legal pad under her mother’s desk. The child of two busy lawyers, Juarez had to find creative ways to entertain herself while her parents finished up work at the office.
“I used to make up stories and characters and draw them doing different things,” says Juarez. “I always felt that I had a closer relationship to myself through drawing than through spoken or written words.”
Today, Juarez is a professional artist and shares her love of creating with her early-education students at an infant-toddler program in North Seattle. Her teaching philosophy is grounded in the Reggio approach; cultivating a space for curiosity and development through play and art-making.
“Just like kids babble before they learn to talk, they also scribble before they develop their own pictorial language,” says Juarez. “Art is a language that can be used for something deeper and more important than just something that looks nice on a wall.”
Formerly Homeless Family Happy to Have a Home for the Holidays
Photo: Joshua Huston
Last Christmas, Anthony Battiste and his four sons — Chris 9, Anthony, 5, Abraham, 4, and Alvin, 2 — spent the holiday in a homeless shelter. After he and his wife separated and she moved to California, Battiste was left with one income and too many expenses. Though he tried to make ends meet with his earnings as a roofer, after a couple of months the family was evicted from their rental in Tacoma.
There were many times when Battiste had to choose between providing food for the children and paying for a hotel room. Despite his best efforts, the family sometimes had no choice but to sleep in their vehicle.
“It was trying, but at the same time it was binding,” says Battiste. “It presented an opportunity for me and the boys to become a strong cadre, leaning and depending on each other to get through the hard times.”
Carnival of Souls 