At FACES for the Future, we’re committed to our students’ wellness and education. Our programs remain in operation, and we continue to serve students in our communities and stay connected to program partners. Our team is grateful for essential workers – especially the FACES internship preceptors who are taking care of patients on the front lines and the teachers who work with us every day to educate our students. In addition, we are proud of our students; they continue to inspire us with their resilience, enthusiasm, and hope in the face of challenging circumstances.

Please visit this page often for updates on our COVID-19 response and to learn what our students and programs are doing during school closures.

Click here to read our formal FACES’ COVID-19 Response document 

Here’s what our students are up to:

FACES Albuquerque Students start Internships

Currently, there are two cohorts of FACES scholars in Albuquerque. The seniors at HLHS & SVA have spent the first half of the year in workshops learning about COVID-19, Health Relationships and Boundary Setting, and health care pathways. Currently, these students are transitioning into online internships with Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, Albuquerque Health Care For the Homeless, and First Choice Community Health. Students will be reviewing online sex-ed classes and creating social media content for Planned Parenthood. At First Choice, Community Health students will have the opportunity to shadow individuals working as Community Health Workers and Medical Billers. These students will also be graduating from FACES in May. We have a new cohort of juniors from the Native American Community Academy. These students will be learning about personal wellness, public health, and health career pathways. These students will present a final project at the end of the year on a specific health issue in their community. Next year these students will participate in the regular FACES internship pending COVID-19.

San Francisco Seniors created “positive messages” to share with Preceptors back in October of 2020

These messages were intended to be a way to connect with our Industry Partners and remind them they are still at the forefront of our thoughts as they battle the Coronavirus Pandemic. All of these Seniors had the opportunity to participate in the Winter internship rotation, before the COVID-19 Shelter in Place order. (each student gave me permission to share).

Angie Flores, Senior @ JOCHS

Federico Rangel, Senior @ JOCHS

Maureen Oriente, Senior @ JOCHS

Raiyana Alam, Senior @ JOCHS

Mental Health workforce development

In November 2020, FACES held a focus group for 8 students from HBS, in partnership with our funders from SFDPH (Kimberly Ganade). Participants had the opportunity to learn about different career options while also providing very valuable data. The goal of the focus group was to gain insight into the barriers students of color may face as they work towards a degree in the Mental and Behavioral Health field. Student insight will be used towards the continued effort of building a strong workforce development pipeline for SF youth.

FACES Continues Pipeline Work with UCSF 

One silver lining of sheltering in place has been finding innovative ways to continue serving FACES students. This Spring, FACES was set to pilot an internship and job-shadowing program in partnership with UCSF Pediatric Residents. When schools closed, the amazing team at UCSF helped us pivot this programming – coming up with a series of virtual workshops open to FACES students nationwide! So far, workshops have been attended by 100+ FACES students and have included a UCSF career panel, an interactive session using real-life medical case scenarios, and a COVID-19 Q&A. The FACES Team is grateful to the UCSF Pediatric Residents and staff who are helping to plan and implement these wonderful virtual pipeline events for the FACES Program!

FACES Hayward Students Show Their Support for St. Rose Hospital

FACES Hayward students miss their internship supervisors at St. Rose Hospital! During this week’s Zoom workshop, students put together this special image to thank St. Rose Hospital staff.

 

FACES Sacramento Students Begin Hosting Trivia Thursdays!

For many FACES students, school closures mean that they’ve become caregivers for younger siblings, increased their hours at essential jobs, and continued to complete academic work, all while missing their friends and navigating the pandemic’s impacts on their families and communities. FACES Sacramento Program Coordinator Taylor Intermill came up with a fun way for students to escape the stress and spend some time socializing with their peers. Each Thursday, Taylor hosts an hour-long Zoom trivia game open to FACES students and program coordinators from all program locations. FACES Trivia Thursday is increasing in popularity, and enables students from Sacramento to engage in a little friendly competition with programs in San Francisco, Albuquerque, Denver, and more! Taylor says, “It’s a great way for students and staff to get their minds off of the everyday stress and negativity – plus, who doesn’t like a little competition?” Trivia Thursdays is just one of the strategies FACES is using to stay connected to students during school closures.

 

FACES Albuquerque Students Use Poetry to Gain Perspective 

The FACES Albuquerque students had a workshop with Reina Davis and learned about poetry. Here are some words from Reina: 

Poetry can be such an important tool for students during this time. Poetry allows for the expression of thoughts and experiences in a way where you can simultaneously process and portray them using YOUR narrative. This can give students a sense of autonomy and authority over their lives and over the articulation of their current circumstances. In this way, poetry can make students feel heard, even without an audience. Poetry is also an extremely accessible medium that requires a writing utensil and something to write on. This can be anything from a piece of scratch paper and a pen, a marker, and a napkin, or a laptop. It is also extremely accessible in terms of time availability. A poem can be written in 5 minutes, or less, and can be continued over a period of time if one so chooses. For students, it allows them a pressure-free way to take time to themselves and reflect on their days or write about fantastical things, or their love, or their joy or pain. This I feel is an act of self-care, and in the words of Audre Lorde, “an act of self-preservation” needed during this time.

The intention of this workshop was to allow students to take a break from the linear thinking often required in school and to think abstractly about the way they perceive the world. To do this, I had the students think of three emotions outside of “happy”, “mad”, or “sad”. I then had them apply the five senses to each emotion. What would that emotion taste as if it had a taste? After that exercise, I had the students think of the days of the week personified as people, or to apply the five senses to each day of the week. This allowed for the students to truly reflect on how they think of each day, and what influences those thoughts. Are their weeks the same? Why do they feel a specific way about a certain day? Controlling the narrative on how we portray our days, allows for students to gain autonomy on how they wish to articulate their lived experiences in their daily lives and to realize the power within that.

Read a poem that our FACES student Tala Abeita wrote here

 

Three-Part COVID-19 Workshop Series

When the FACES team first heard that school closures were a possibility, we immediately got to work designing online workshops for our students to replace the usual in-person programming. The first workshops were a 3-part series on COVID-19. We thought the pandemic was an important learning opportunity for students – so they could understand what was happening in their lives and in the context of their interest in health. 

 

Workshops were entitled COVID-19 and the Public Health Response, Medical Ethics and Health Disparities During COVID-19, and Mental Health and Social Isolation During COVID-19. Through each workshop, students engaged in interactive learning and discussions about COVID-19, epidemiology, public health, and the pandemic’s impacts in their communities and nationwide. Students also completed lesson assessments after each workshop and had opportunities to connect with their program coordinators and peers about the immediate personal impact of the pandemic on their families.

If you are like most of us, your inbox is filled with emails and text messages from leaders of organizations who want to reassure us during this difficult time. Most talk about how we will come through this together and how there is a lot of good in our communities if we just look closely enough. And all of that is true.

AND … when in my training to become a grief recovery specialist, one of the things they taught us is that healing is difficult unless and until there is recognition of the pain and suffering someone is going through. Until we acknowledge the pain, we cannot move through it. If we don’t acknowledge it, it haunts us.

So I just want to say what I think we are all feeling: THIS REALLY SUCKS! It’s hard and weird and confusing. It can test us in ways we couldn’t foresee and has plunged many of us into darkness. Some of us are desperately concerned about our finances or a family member. Some of us don’t like being cooped up or are in an unsafe situation. Some of us are wondering what this will mean for our children’s futures if they miss the rest of the school year or we are struggling to work from home and keep up their education at the same time. The list of struggles and worries goes on and on. It is a list that is unique to us all.

I get it. I’m pretty good at this resiliency thing, and I am using all of my tools to get by! A confession: This morning I made a batch of my Grandma June’s cheese biscuits just because I really needed a taste from home to help me feel better!

This situation is testing us. It is challenging our ability to be creative thinkers, to problem solve, to manage limited resources. It is testing our partnerships, and our ability to be connected while apart. It is testing our patience, and our capacities. It’s no joke and neither is the stress that comes with all of it.

And in the midst of it all … all of the noise and the chaos … are the children. Those with little agency to control decision making, yet those who feel the impact of those decisions. And at FACES, we are here to humbly serve the children.

So when we thought about “what comes now?” – now that our programs need to adapt to a changing situation – our hearts and minds immediately went to the FACES students and to the people we work with to support them. How can we continue to humbly serve them when they are out of school?

Here is a link to our “FACES for the Future Coalition COVID-19 Response” document.
It outlines what we are doing to keep our programs operational and connected to people. We focused on some key areas of service, including a resolve to KEEP THEM LEARNING even while they are out of school.

We know it can’t fix everything – but we are committed to doing all we can to maintain our relationships and direct service to FACES students.

We want to thank you all for your continued support. We are grateful to our partners in this work, our FACES families who are bravely managing uncharted waters, and our FACES students who continue to impress us every day with their humor and resiliency.

And I also want to thank the FACES team. Each person in the FACES Coalition of programs is bringing all of their passion, hard work, skill and professionalism to the table. I am honored to work with each of them every day!