Fostering Opportunities in Colorado

Kids with foster care experience are more likely to be placed in special education, more frequently incarcerated, less likely to graduate high school, and MOST IMPORTANTLY express poorer self-esteem than youth who haven’t experienced abuse and neglect.  

Few programs have adequately addressed the needs of these kids when it comes to school. I won’t get into all the details here and now, but as an educator, foster parent, school counselor, and all-around advocate for kids with complex stories, I believe we can do better.

When I wrote my dissertation 8 years ago, my goal was to explore best practices in educational programming to support youth with foster care experience in schools. My big question was HOW can we do better? 

I learned a lot about what kids and adults need to be successful and my final product was a lengthy academic paper that wasn’t immediately translatable to practice. I didn’t want my research to sit in a dusty journal for academics. I wanted to use what I’d learned to help actual people. So, I developed a workshop series called Fostering School Success that I’ve been teaching and refining for the past several years.

Last month, the fabulous Liz Solomon and I combined our respective professional superpowers and facilitated a two-day training for the staff in the Colorado Department of Human Services Fostering Opportunities initiative. These folks are doing phenomenal and groundbreaking work to support kids with foster care experience–and they’re improving educational outcomes. 

If you know us both, you know that we bring different energy, interests, and skills to the table.  Together, we incorporated human-centered design principles into the Fostering School Success curriculum, and Liz offered exercises to enhance collaboration and leadership across the organization. Participants worked together, asked great questions, and came up with amazing ideas about applying what they learned to solve problems and improve the impact of Fostering Opportunities. 

I generally do work that I love, but it isn’t every day that so many parts of my life and work come together so synergistically.  To be able to run a workshop for brilliant people who care so deeply about kids…in a way that honors their respective expertise AND will improve things for kids…while ALSO getting to witness my badass partner in her facilitation element….*chefs kiss*

I’m excited to continue this work I’m passionate about…and to keep finding new ways to partner professionally with my love ❤️