Brain Food Project

1. EASe™
Flex Day Fall 2017
Empathy, Awareness, and Sensitivity for equity.
Dr. Jennifer Dorian, Dr. Shushanek Silvas, Mr. Nick Quintana

2. EASe Defined
EASe™ training methodology and culture shift (EASe Culture)
EASe (Empathy, Awareness, and Sensitivity for equity)
teaches faculty, staff, & admin how to effectively interact with
individuals (in this case students) when working to create
equity and uplift lives by celebrating culture, diversity, and
growth through purposeful thoughts, words, and actions.
Objective:
 To understand how students’ lives can be uplifted (pairing
equity and culture)

3. EASe Expanded
EASe is currently implemented on multiple college campuses,
such as Norco College, Feather River College, and of course,
FCC (PASS, The Zone, Business Dept. Counseling)

4. Why EASe?
Students need to belong
Students need to feel authentically cared for in order to realize their best selves.
We have a consistent, interactive relationship with students. Implementing EASe
represents deliberate action to provide students with:
 A place to learn and receive needed academic assistance
 A place to join with others and create community
 A place to GET WHAT THEY NEED TO SUCCEED
 A place to belong
 A place to feel celebrated for who they are regardless of their life experiences
or circumstances

5. Why EASe?
Students need to belong
 Diverse student experiences could include the following:
1) Having a bad day;
2) Not understanding material;
3) Homelessness; housing struggles;
4) Abuse;
5) Family concerns;
6) Identity development;
7) Loneliness
Just to name a few…

6. Challenges of Everyday Life
1) The reality is that ALL students encounter challenges and obstacles
2) Our job is so important because WE are a major of part of the solution
3) We flex our services and support based on the individual needs of the students and
their situations
* It is important it is to place yourself in someone else’s shoes- so often we are
removed from the student perspective

7. Let’s Back Up to the Problems:
To understand the EASe solution, we
must understand the problems first

8. Let’s Look at the Problems
 STUDENTS ENCOUNTER THESE PROBLEMS across the U.S.
1) UNMET NEED TO BELONG
2) FEELINGS OF DISENFRANCHISEMENT
3) UNMET NEED FOR ENCOURAGEMENT TO DEVELOP SELF-CONFIDENCE
4) ACADEMIC UNDERPREPAREDNESS: 2/3rds (over 66%) of students entering CC
are underprepared
Since EASe is a training system that can be used with or without the Brain Food
Project, it’s worth mentioning these:
5) FOOD INSECURITY
 FOOD INSECURITY is the dirty little secret of higher education. Pretending
a problem doesn’t exist isn’t working
6) STUDENT SUPPLIES INSECURITY

9. Now, let’s talk solutions

10. EASe equips us to:
 1) Transform the Environment: EXAMPLE Regardless of the capacity in which
you serve students, when individuals act with EASe, they consider the students
as whole people with whole and diverse needs while honoring their
difference and recognizing their similarities. Through this, community is
strengthened.
 2) Reduce Stress and Worry (college can be frightening!): EXAMPLE- Students
want to be here when they feel authentically cared for- stress and worry is
reduced when we provide an EASe based environment

11. EASe equips us to:
 3) Motivate Students to Self-Regulate Learning: EXAMPLE- Students are
motivated to improve academically in an accepting and judgment free zone full
of encouragement and support.
 4) Provide quality of service: EXAMPLE- students feel comfortable and
accepted when EASe is implemented

12. Creating a Cultural Shift to Uplift Student
Equity
 It is NO longer enough to provide only teaching and academic support.
Students need to be recognized as whole people with whole and diverse
needs.
 With EASe, everyone is encouraged to accept their worth and success.
Everyone is supported through EASe.
*As human beings, we need and want to feel cared for and belong-
When an EASe environment is provided, students have the opportunity to
thrive

13. Creating Equity
WE are here to create equity and uplift student lives by respecting culture, diversity,
and growth- through purposeful thoughts, words, & actions
 Example: understanding how to properly offer support without embarrassing students
 Example: learning how to serve students by celebrating them rather than acting with “a
favor providing” attitude
 Example: identifying with students and preempting their needs (using our emotional
intelligence to decipher what they need before they ask by implementing EASe)

14. Creating Equity begins with the word
Uplift
 EASe Mission: Uplift student lives through the implementation of
empathy, awareness, and sensitivity for equity training to
recognize and celebrate students as whole people with whole and
diverse needs through purposeful thoughts, words, and actions to
support student equity, academic success, and ongoing success

15. Somehow, we always end up back with
Maslow
 Maslow’s theory: meet basic needs to
progress as a human being
 Students treated with EASe experience:
 Physiological Provisions: Safe Place to
hang-out and learn (the Brain Food
Project, when implemented with EASe,
provides food as well).
 Safety: total acceptance; freedom from
fear of judgment

16.  Sense of Belonging: feeling wanted by
the US, the college community
 Self-Esteem: recognition of
accomplishment and respect for effort,
presence, and interest
 Self-Actualization: belief in oneself
(internal locus of control/life lasting
tool)

17. A Note on Sense of Belonging
(this has emerged as increasingly important through a
series of focus groups)
CULTURE SHIFT!
 EASe creates an environment where needs are met (academically and
humanistically)
 Student home away from home
We encourage the creation of a place to belong; you can create a sense of
belonging for students by always remembering this:
Say NO to the 3 L’s
No one should feel Lonely, Left out, or Less than

18. In addition, leadership plays a major role
Transformational Leadership
(Burns and Bass )
“a leadership approach that causes
change in individuals and social systems”
Servant Leadership
“The servant-leader is servant first… It
begins with the natural feeling that one
wants to serve, to serve first.” -Robert
K. Greenleaf
Create a kinder and more just
environment.

19. Quick look: Encouragement with EASe
 Encouragement looks like the:
 Celebration of diverse experiences
 Positive reinforcement
 Verbal uplifting
 Meeting of needs
 Consistent support
 Kind interaction
 Transformative leadership/customer service
 Service-based leadership/customer service
 Encouragement will lead to confidence and success
in our students and in your life!
Example: every action with EASe begins with “How can
I encourage the people I serve today?”

20. Closer look:
EASe
 Empathy for students, their
struggles and experiences,
and their presence and
efforts
 Awareness of differences
and similarities in culture,
ability, opportunity, and
opinion
 Sensitivity for feelings,
challenges, situations, and
special circumstances
 for equity to uplift lives for
parity in outcomes and the
opportunities that organically
follow student success

21. EASe & Sense of Belonging
CULTURE SHIFT! RECAP
 Your actions and words will create a:
1) Safe place to grow and learn
 As members of an academic community, we have the potential to
THIS IS THE KEY:
NO MATTER WHO YOU ARE, WHERE YOU’VE BEEN, WHAT YOU’VE DONE, WHAT
HAPPENED TO YOU, WHAT YOU HAVE OR DON’T HAVE, YOU BELONG IN HERE
 Never guess about someone’s experiences- Everyone has struggled

22. EASe & Psychological Safety
• Psychological Safety: A psychological construct informing individuals’ level of
safety in regard to the willingness to test decisions and actions in the workplace
without the fear of reprisal (Carmeli et al., 2014).
• Psychological Safety increases positive and successful outcomes and encourages
institutional cohesion (Silvas, 2016).
• EASe helps to create an environment with psychological safety.
• Students’ levels of psychological safety are directly related to the level of perceived
psychological safety provided by the educational environment.
• Thus, educational institutions have the ability to increase students’ perceptions of
psychological safety by instituting EASe as a pedagogy and as a means to increase
student well-being.

23. EASe™ Comes to Life in Tutoring:
Impact of EASe in students’ own words…
 Emerged theme from recent student responses: EASe normalizes the receipt of help
and promotes an equitable learning environment for student success. (*name of
individuals and programs have been removed)
Student quotes:
 “I come here everyday because I belong here. I am welcome here any time, and the
tutors know me. Sometimes I come here frustrated, angry, and even once very sad. I
start working with the tutors, especially, ‘tutor name,’ and I am in a different world
where I feel safe and at home. Do you know how that feels for someone like me?”
 “I never tell you this before because we don’t say in my country. There, it is not right to
ask help. In the ‘program name,’ the helping is everywhere. They are so good to me
because they want help me. I believe they understand when in my country I would help
them. They know my position, which is very challenged. Everything is ‘program name’
for me- you help me so much to feel not alone.”
 “You guys accept me; I feel safe here.”

24. EASe™ Comes to Life:
Impact of EASe in students’ own words…
 Emerged theme from recent student responses: EASe normalizes the receipt of
help and promotes an equitable learning environment for student success.
Student quotes:
 “The ‘tutors’ identify with me; they understand me because they’ve been there. We
study together and eat together- feels like home but better”
 “I feel special when I’m in tutoring. I was having a bad day once, a really bad day.
“Tutor name” knew I was struggling. She was so caring, and I always came back after
that because I felt comfortable. If you saw me at my worst and still wanted me
around, I figured it was worth coming back. I’ll keep coming back and telling other
students they should do the same.”
 “I’m learning to read this year- people don’t do that in college because they already
know how; their supposed to know things. I can read better now because no one
judged me in tutoring. It seemed like they [the tutors] knew I couldn’t read but never
said it out loud, just helped. We played so many word games. I read a book with the
tutors’ help. When they told me I was doing great, I even believed it.”

25. QUESTIONS???