On Tuesday we held an educational meeting in the media center at Beulah Ralph. Michelle Ribaudo called the meeting to order and welcomed everyone there. Tara Arnett then gave a brief treasurer’s report and the updated Budget for the year was proposed and passed. Of note: because of more success in our fundraisers than we had anticipated, we were able to more than double what we had previously allocated for Mini-Grants, as well as increase a few other items. Definitely a welcome surprise!
Our November spotlight winner, Alpha Hart’s Ms. Luna, was also mentioned. Members – if you would like to help out on the Educator Support committee, let me know at comosepta@gmail.com ! It’s all work you can do from home, and all focused on things that help support and recognize those who work with our students. (Mini-Grants, Spotlights, end-of-year Awards..) We also have several other committees you can volunteer with, so you can find what would best fit your schedule and passion. Advocacy Committee, Event Planning, Social Committee.. let us know what you’re interested in!
Then it was on to the announcements. Of course, the Kindness Shirts were in, and handed out to those who were in attendance. Overall, we sold 96 shirts and raised $925.43! Thank you so much to everyone who ordered, whether a member or just supporting the message. If you had your shirt bulk shipped to us and weren’t able to be at the meeting, reach out to us at comosepta@gmail.com and we can arrange an alternate pickup.
There won’t be a December meeting, as that month is often quite busy enough, but we do have an exciting event scheduled that month, together with MoDE Foundation! Come out to the Magic Tree in Cherry Hill, Dec 13, 5:30-7:30pm for an inclusive celebration. Indoor & outdoor activities, free cocoa & cookies, an understanding Santa, and of course the magical lights of the tree. It’s going to be a great time. Our next SEPTA meeting itself will be January 21, where Vince Thompson will present on the topic of De-escalation.
SEPTA will be setting up our traveling sensory room at a couple upcoming events – the ECSE Glow Night on Dec 4, and Alive in Christ’s Inclusive Christmas Event on Dec 7. Let us know if you’d like more details about either of these events, or if you have an event that you think could benefit from a sensory space.
MoDE (Missouri Disability Empowerment) also had a couple announcements. MoDE Foundation is teaming with Columbia College for a basketball event tomorrow evening. You can register for FREE tickets at my.ccis.edu/mode And Robyn Schelp gave an update on where things were at regarding the recording policy on a legislative scale. She says Chuck Basye is planning to pre-file legislation in December that will prohibits schools from disallowing recording in IEP/504 meetings. As it goes further, the hope is to add language to protect teachers from retaliation. She did say that getting things passed in the state legislature could take a couple years, and still wouldn’t have the specifics as to how the policy should be written. Thus it’s still important to focus locally as well, and keep discourse going.
With all business and announcements taken care of, it was time for the presentation. Kerry Townsend, CPS’s Library Media Coordinator, had prepared a presentation focused on inclusion and diversity of many types in literature. If you’d like to access the highlights of that presentation, you can view it here: bit.ly/cpsseptadiversity
We started off with an activity using El Deafo, an award-winning “own voices” book (a book where a diverse author is telling their own story). Kerry then moved on to sharing background about diverse literature, and stressing that libraries want their collections to have “windows and mirrors” for the students. In other words, it’s important that the readers can see themselves reflected in the stories, and that they can see others represented as well.
There are many areas of diversity, but unsurprisingly questions from the attendees were largely focused on the area of disability. (i.e. Do you know of examples of books where a character just happens to have a disability but it’s not the main focus of the story?) Our discussion ended up running to the end of our time. I do want to share that Kerry mentioned that Schneider Family Book Award books are given to child-teen books that cover the experience of a character with a disability. That might be a good place to start looking if you’re searching to fill out your own bookshelves.
One big takeaway is to talk with the media specialist at your student’s school – they love to have the input from parents and will help in whatever way they can, whether it’s suggesting books or listening to your thoughts on which books you’d love to see in their collection. And to any school media specialists out there: if you’d like to order a few specific books to expand your offerings that include disability, we’d love to see a mini-grant used for that.