Welcome back for Episode 4 of Season 2! For this episode of Community Room, we have a special guest - a New York City native but joining us from Boston is Abe Fernández! Abe currently directs the Children's Aid National Center for Community Schools in New York City. providing on- and off-site coaching, training, and consultation to many community school initiatives across the country. Prior to joining Children’s Aid, Abe was the director of youth services and ran the multiservice Washington Houses Community Center at Union Settlement Association in East Harlem. We talk about some of the differences in approach between NYC and the Lower Mainland, the similarities in philosophical approaches, the Children's Aid Developmental Triangle, the 4 common pillars of Community Schools, and much more!

RESOURCES:

Developmental Triangle (located on page 2) - https://www.nccs.org/sites/default/files/resource/NCCS_BuildingCommunitySchools.pdf

Abel McDaniels Article - https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2018/08/22/454977/building-community-schools-systems/

QUOTE:

“The research is abundantly clear; nothing motivates a child more than when learning is valued by schools and families/community working together in partnership …. These forms of involvement do not happen by accident or even by invitation. They happen by explicit strategic intervention.”
- Michael Fullan, Rethinking Educational Change with Heart and Mind

BONUS QUOTE:

"Vision without action is a daydream; action without a vision is a nightmare" - Japanese Proverb

BIO:

Abe Fernández directs the National Center for Community Schools and guides the place-based collective impact initiatives at Children’s Aid in New York City, leveraging twenty-five years of experience in education, youth development, and the social impact sector. He was previously a senior advisor to South Bronx Rising Together, a cradle-to-career collective impact initiative of which he was a founding co-director. He also led the Empire State Poverty Reduction Initiative – a statewide effort to plan and implement strategies to mitigate poverty – for the Bronx. Abe is a national thought leader on the community school strategy and, with the team at NCCS, provides consultation and training to initiatives around the country and beyond. He is a graduate of Brown
University and the Senior Leaders Program for Nonprofit Professionals at Columbia Business School.

You can reach Abe on Twitter: @abefernandez