A special collaboration between the School Crisis Recovery & Renewal project and the Pacific Southwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center
Thursday, September 14, 12 - 2 pm. HT / 3 - 5 p.m. PT / 4 - 6 p.m. MT (find your timezone)
From Lahaina and outward, the waves of impact and layers of grief, trauma, and crisis reverberate weeks after the wildfire.
This event surfaces ecological grief and climate anxiety for those watching. This event surfaces vicarious trauma and grief for those of us connected to Lahaina living in the diaspora and on the mainland. This event might activate those of us who have experienced devastating wildfires before in California and beyond.
It’s a moment to gather as school crisis leaders to hold the complexity of how this event is experienced by so many, and what we can listen into for deeper learning to better support the children, youth, and young adults we serve.
This event is a collaboration of the School Crisis Recovery & Renewal project (a National Child Traumatic Stress Network Category II site) and the youth and young adult specialty program of the Pacific Southwest MHTTC. A special session that offers us language, learning, and opportunities to listen to voices that hold wisdom and experience in Native Hawaiian grief work, learning about youth climate resilience leadership, and a special share from Butte County Office of Education leaders reflecting on wildfire years after. We’ll also have an opportunity to break into smaller groups to extend our learning with topics such as ecological grief and climate anxiety, how to support youth and young adults in the context of ecological disaster, what emotional and cultural recovery might feel like, and our own grief frameworks, which can impact the way we lead.
It is an opportunity to lean into individual and collective cultural humility as we examine how our grief cultures might collaborate for healing, or at times collide and prevent recovery or renewal.
Welcome, Orientation & an Invitation for Self-Reflection and Grounding: What is coming up for us as leaders of school communities, systems, and allies of youth and young adults, in the context of climate disaster, wildfire, collective and vicarious grief?
Kaumaha: Hawaiian Grief Work and Grief Cultural Collaborations & Considerations with Adam Keawe Manalo-Camp
Climate Resilient School Leadership: Merging Ancestral Traditions and Climate Solutions with Lil Milagro Henriquez, Mycelium Youth Network
A Love Letter to Lahaina Educators and Other Wildfire Educators from Butte County Office of Education, California
Breakout sessions for deeper intentional reflection and sharing (participants will choose their breakout selection during the session):
Closing together: what might we need moving forward, and how might we support ourselves and each other?
We offer this place to process intentionally for school leaders (system administrators, county offices of education, local education agencies, school mental health professionals) and youth and young adult providers, professionals, and peer supports nationwide.
If you do not work in schools or with young adults, we welcome you to join us as a learner.
Adam Keawe Manalo-Camp (he/him) is a writer, cultural practitioner, and historian. Adam is Jewish and of Kanaka Maoli and Filipino ancestry and is based in Las Vegas, NV. His writings on history and culture have been published in ʻŌiwi Native Hawaiian Literary Journal, Queernesia, and is a regular contributor in the only Native Hawaiian paper, Ka Wai Ola o OHA. His Instagram account is @adamkeawe where he regularly posts on Hawaiian history and culture.
Lil Milagro Henriquez (she/her) is a 20-year veteran of social and environmental justice activism. She is a mother, passionate organizer, lover of all things nerdy. In 2017, she founded Mycelium Youth Network, an organization dedicated to preparing and empowering frontline youth for climate change. In 2020, she received the Women’s Earth Alliance fellowship and the 2021 recipient of the Partners Advancing Climate Equity fellowship. She was recently recognized as one of the top 16 Eco-Warriors of 2021 by Marin Magazine and did a TEDx talk with the City of San Francisco illuminating the failures of conventional education to prepare youth for climate change in 2022. In 2023, she was featured in Climate Resilience by Kylie Flanagan as a climate resilience leader to watch.
Erin Briley (she/her) was born and raised in Wailuku, Maui where she worked many years of her adult life as a school psychologist in Central Maui before moving to the mainland. Erin Briley joined the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) in 2019. She currently is the School Mental Health Coordinator for the Mountain Plains Mental Health Technology Transfer Center Network (MHTTC). As the program manager and school mental health lead, her work focuses on providing intensive technical assistance, resources, and training to school staff on ways to support school-based mental health. She is also a WICHE Program Manager for the Hawaii Psychology Internship Consortium (HI-PIC), an accredited doctoral-level psychology internship. Prior to working with WICHE, Ms. Briley worked as a School Psychologist and has over 20 years of experience working in the schools, serving school districts in California, Hawaii, and Colorado while providing direct and indirect supports for children ages 3 through 22 of all developmental levels. She has additionally served temporarily as an administrator in special education as well as a program administrator for a school-based behavioral health program at the DOE state level. Ms. Briley earned her Bachelor’s in Human Development and Family Studies at Colorado State University, and her Master’s in Counseling/School Psychology with a Certificate in Applied Behavior Analysis at California State University Los Angeles; she is also a Nationally Certified School Psychologist.
Matt Reddam (he/him) is a licensed therapist and current School and Community Wellness Advisor for the Butte County Office of Education. The former Policy and Practice Coordinator for Trauma Transformed Bay Area, Matt is recognized as a regional expert in traumatic stress and an advocate for marginalized and historically subjugated populations. Beginning his career as a therapist, Matt quickly found that systems and communities often pathologized children’s attempts to survive, leading to misdiagnosis, marginalization, and the robbery of resilience. This led him to shift his work from individual treatment to the consultation and training of large systems. As a survivor of complex trauma, a student of racial justice, and a father, Matt continues to walk the line of learner, expert, and fierce advocate. After the Camp Fire in 2018, Matt began working primarily within Butte County, and continues to support the health and wellness of the community of Paradise. Matt believes that true systemic and community change comes from discomfort, relationship, and unflinching self-reflection.
Speakers & Breakout Facilitators
Leora Wolf-Prusan (she/her) EdD
SCRR Project Director
PSMHTTC School Mental Health Field Director
Leora Wolf-Prusan serves as the Project Director for the School Crisis Recovery & Renewal project and as the School Mental Health field director for the Pacific Southwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center (MHTTC), in addition to many other facilitation projects. She received a BA in international relations and a BA in Spanish with a minor in Social & Ethnic Relations from the University of California, Davis; a teaching credential from Mills College; and an EdD in educational leadership from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Her work in school crisis recovery and renewal is motivated by and dedicated to educators and youth who envision schools as a platform for community and connection.
Oriana Ides (she/hers), MA, LPCCI, PPS
SCRR Field Coach
PS MHTTC Youth and Young Adult Co-Lead
Oriana Ides is the School Mental Health Training Specialist at CARS, who approaches healing the wounds of trauma and oppression as core elements of social justice. She has worked with young people across life course from elementary school to college, and has served as teacher-leader, school counselor, classroom educator and program director. She is committed to generating equity within school structures and policies by focusing on evidence-based mental health techniques and institutional design. Her work to forge a more just world is motivated by and dedicated to Amilca Ysabel Mouton Fuentes.
