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A podcast from the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint
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An interview with Cheryl Poe: Black Collective Advocacy Network Conference
Please join us for An interview with Cheryl Poe: Black Collective Advocacy Network Conference.
Event Title: Black Collective Advocacy Network Conference
Uplifting Black Families in the Disability Community.
For Us By Us About Us
Date and time: August 11, 2023 -August 13, 2023
August 11, 12-6:00 pm
August 12, 2023, 8:30-6:00
August 13, 2023, 9:00 -12:00
Location: Virtual Event
Event Description: The Black Collective Network Advocacy Conference is a national virtual event that supports, acknowledges, and recognizes the needs of Black and Disabled students, family members, advocates, and professionals in the special education community.
We have created a space where the Black experiences, voices, and resources are shared to uplift Black families of children with disabilities.
For Us: We focus on the needs of Black children with disabilities.
By Us: We promote and uplift Black professionals in the disability & advocacy community.
About Us: We reject the current white supremacy narratives in the disability & advocacy community.
We will have nationally recognized experts such as Marie Davis-Pierre of Autism in Black; Attorney Keith Howard and the one and only Cheryl Poe
Registration Cost
Regular fee: $125.00
Link to purchase a ticket: https://whova.com/portal/registration/bcnac_202306/
About Cheryl Poe:
Cheryl Poe is the founder and Executive Director of Advocating 4 Kids, Inc a Special Education Advocacy organization that provides resources, information, and workshops to parents and professionals with a special focus on addressing the needs of Black and Brown children with disabilities.
She is the past board president of the National Allies for Parents in Special Education NAPSE, a national parent-driven organization that works hard to increase access and quality advocacy resources for special education families from underserved populations to improve educational outcomes.
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Mrs. Poe holds a Master of Arts Degree in Urban Education and Counseling. She also has completed over 15 credit hours of postgraduate hours in psychology. In June of 2004, she completed the Nation Group Psychotherapy Institute at the Washington School of Psychiatry in Washington D.C. in the study of Group Psychotherapy. Mrs. Poe completed a two-year term as the Student Outreach and Recruitment Committee Chairperson for the Mid- Atlantic Group Psychotherapy Society Board of Directors. She was awarded the Jefferson Cup for leadership in her role.
Mrs. Poe was the Chair of The National Association for the Education of African American Children with Learning Disabilities (NAEAACLD) Parent Network. Mrs. Poe also served on the board of the Council of Parents, Advocates, and Attorneys (COPAA), where she helped develop strategic goals to address the needs of black people within the organization. Mrs. Poe also served as the Co-Chair for the Social Racial Equity Committee, where is she developed, created, and implemented activities to ensure the needs of Black and Brown Children were addressed and respected within the COPAA organization.
Mrs. Poe completed the inaugural The William & Mary Law Institute of Special Education Advocacy Summer Conference and the first annual class. Eventually, Ms. Poe become a presenter for the William &
Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to a very special kind of mini segment of ASR live. I am here because, well, someone that I know and love and respect very much had something that they wanted to share. And I said, Well, this is a great idea. Why don't we do a live event and tell people about it. So you may already see over well, to my right, left, I don't know what side it is. I've got Cheryl Poe here with me. And let me tell you a little bit about Cheryl and Cheryl, I've got an intro and I'm gonna go through some of this intro here. And then we'll get to the most important part of the end of the intro. Of course, you're the founder and executive director of advocating for Kids Inc, a special education advocacy organization that provides resources information, workshops to parents professionals, with a special focus on addressing the needs of black and brown children with disabilities. You of course, have been a past board president for the National allies, for parents and special education an MC and a national parent driven Oregon, National Parent driven organization that works really hard to increase access and quality advocacy resources for special education and families from underserved populations to improve educational outcomes. You hold a Master's of Arts in urban education and counseling. You have also completed over 15 credit hours of postgraduate work in psychology in June 2004. That seems like yesterday, you complete it the nation, the nation group psychotherapy Institute, I worship in school of psychiatry, in Washington DC. In the study of group psychotherapy, you have completed a two year term as the student outreach and recruitment committee chairperson for the Mid Atlantic psychotherapy society board of directors, and were awarded the Jefferson cup for leadership in that role. You of course, have been the chair of the National Association for Education of African American children with learning disabilities. That's a very long acronym there. So I won't say that. And of course, you've served on the Council of parents, advocates and attorneys COPPA, where you help develop strategies to address the needs of black people within the organization. And you've served as a co chair for the social Racial Equity Committee, where you have helped develop and implement activities to ensure the needs of black and brown children were respected, addressed and respected within COPPA. And you've completed the William and Mary Law Institute of Special Education Advocacy Summer Conference, and the first annual class eventually you became a new This presenter for William and Mary Law Institute, I've heard great things about that of a special education advocacy Summer Conference. You've been a presenter at many conferences, national disability organizations, such as the autism and black conference, this dyslexia Alliance, for black children, presentation, counselor, parents, attorneys and advocates, Philadelphia conference in Virginia Board of people with disabilities, you've been all over the place. Of course, you know, you've been your work experience that includes over 20 years of working with children with various disabilities, and their families, as an in home clinician and therapeutic foster case manager. And of course, you're a mother as well of two boys with learning disabilities. And you pride yourself on understanding the struggles that black parents face when dealing with special education issues. And, of course, it says here that you were diagnosed with ADHD, and learning disabilities receive special education services as a child. So you know, this is work, that you've been doing work that's in your DNA. And you know, I've, what I was going to add here, I mean, long, your long intro there is what's really important to me, which I'm really proud to call you, a friend and a colleague, you're an amazing person out there that's been doing change and changing communities that really need focus and attention. And you know, I've had the opportunity to get to know you and the, the work that you've been doing, and you are relentless and tireless, and somebody that is making positive change in the world. So really excited to have you here today. So Cheryl, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all you do and are all you are and welcome.
Cheryl Poe:Thank you. What a wonderful intro. Can I just have you come around with me?
Guy Stephens:Sure. Sure. I'll just be your new intro person. Right. Well, you know, and again, you know, of course, you know, I read through a lot of your background but but we're really sinks in with me, it's just having known you now for oh, gosh, it's probably goes back at least four years now. Yeah, and of course, you've been on our podcast before. And, you know, I always get excited when I see an email or hear something from you. So you'd reach out to me recently The talk a little bit about a conference that's coming up, which is the black collective Advocacy Network Conference. And you were talking about the conference and, you know, kind of, hey, you know, why don't why don't we share that? Why don't we do a little live together, and we can talk to people about what it is and what you're doing and whatnot. And I will just let you know, real quick, anybody that happens to be watching live, because this is live right now on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and later, we actually even make it available as a podcast. So hopefully, people will listen to it in time to find out about this great event, people that are listening. Now live, feel free to tell us who you are in the chat and where you're from. And I see one of our frequent fliers here, Nicole already has and said, Wow, I'm impressed with his credentials, and happy to join Nicole's from New Jersey, and thankful to be able to listen and learn. So anyone else that's joining on live, feel free to tell us who you are and where you're from. And with that, let me transition to you Cheryl. And why don't you tell us a little bit about this upcoming event? What kinds of things are going to be happening there, where it is how people can get involved, and why don't you take it away?
Cheryl Poe:All right. Well, thank you again, for that wonderful introduction. And it's funny, you're right. We have been working for about four years together.
Guy Stephens:It looks like you just became muted, somehow Cheryl. Oh, okay. Let's see if we can figure out. Okay, okay, perfect. Now, you're unmuted, okay. Yeah, that's the part where you said something really bad about me, I think we've had been working together for four years. Yeah.
Cheryl Poe:That's working with you and watching your processes, they and the work that they've done with lines, interest rates inclusion, I shouldn't wear my shirt, I was so happy when I got my stuff in the mail, I have more than my shirt in St. Louis and pictures and put it on my website. Fantastic. I respect you to the work that you've done. And it's been fun working with you. And I just got back from the arc. I was a presenter yesterday at the Virginia art convention and had a chance to really talk about this issue in a way that I believe is important. So, you know, this conference that I'm doing is like a bucket list of drinking, I as a black woman who went through some very racial experiences when my I was trying to get my children identified for services and keep them services. And it was frustrating, because I didn't I could not find any advocates that looked like that either. Right. I they were predominantly white advocates, white women, and the issues that I felt were getting in the way of me being able to make sure that my son and my oldest son to get his speech therapy services was definitely difficult. So over the years of doing all of this work, I finally got to a position where I realize that there are a lot of black advocates, black schools, like colleges, black professionals that are doing this work, and have been doing this work, but we're scattered all over the place. So we all started kind of trying to come together just for each other, right? Just to share resources and, and address some of that commonality of the intersectionality that exists with having a disability or raising a child with a disability and the fact that they're black. There is racism that exists in America, there is racism that exists in our public schools. And guy, you know, just from your work with restraint and seclusion, that the data shows federally, that if you are a black student with a disability, your chances of being restrained or secluded are much greater you think not because black kids are better than white kids. I've heard people say that it's been and I don't believe that to be true at all. I believe that the system educational system, has a lot to work on. Because think about it, why people weren't allowed in public education until the 50s. That wasn't that long with that. Because even after Brown versus the Board of Education was when I was making everything portable, was passed is still having been through the Jim Crow kind of laws, right? It's actually the kids in school. So if you think about it, this is never developed for black at all. Then you had disabilities. People black or white that had disabilities were not allowed to go to law schools, right. They too were they were discriminated against. They were institutionalized. They are treated as animals. I'm and so when you put those intersectionalities together, and you're trying to go through a system that we had to develop the laws for both of us to go, well guess what it takes a while to break. So me into wonderful, wonderful, wonderful people from across the country decided to I was able to get them to all come together. And we are having a conference called the Black collective network advocacy. And it's uplifting black families, either disability communities, we're saying it's for us, meaning that the topics will be centered around that intersectionality. You know, we say it's by us, because even within the distances of communities, and you may have observed some of this yourself guide, and they even talked about that, when it comes to presenting in these large organizations, you don't see people do combat, I mean, you may see one out of 30. You know, I, the one that I just came from this disease, there are none of them from what I understand where there were no, no people that were part of the main luminary, you know, kind of keynote, the big kinds of presentations, I think, maybe be presented. And that's usually kind of the norm that you see at conferences. So we're saying by us, because there are a lot of talented old black advocates that are doing great work. And this is a platform for them to shine, you know, where they can get the word out about what they do, and how, and connect with the community and, and make sure that they're staying up on their skills, and they have opportunities to mentor and they have opportunities to share all the wonderful knowledge that they have. And then when we talk the about us that's in there is that we, this is going to be specific to that intersectionality. You know, parents need by parents have to navigate not only just the regulations, but then we got to deal with those micro aggressions, and how did the micro aggressions get in the way of getting your child to services that they need. And that is just some of the things that that we're going to do. The conference is virtual. And we did it on purpose. For lots of reasons. A, it's cheaper, right, you don't have to do reduces barriers, people don't have to fly or travel anywhere, you don't have to pay for hotel, you don't have to pay for your meals or anything like that you're in the comfort of your home. And you know, parents tend to have to watch our kids, right? Especially moms, and this gives you a chance to hey, you need to give your children some attention, that's fine, because everything that we do is going to be recorded. So they can come back and look at it later we it's about getting the information there. As long as a person buys a ticket, they will have access to every single session recorded, because they may want to go back and listen to something or you know, even the day of or around the conference weekend times, there may be times that they just can't be there. They just can't be there live with us die. And I can go on board. So tell me where to stop. Any questions?
Guy Stephens:Yeah, no, this is great. And I know you had some things to share. But in the meantime, I was also going to share the webpage for this if that's okay. So you've got a webpage about the event, right? And I hopefully if all went well, I have that up on my screen now. So people can see that. And of course, the webpage has a lot of what you just told us, it talks about when the events going to happen, the dates and talks about you know, kind of the big point you made here, you know, for us, by us about us. And of course people can purchase a ticket. And, you know, sometimes the tickets for these events are I mean, I hate to say this, but you know, they're they're cost prohibitive. And you know, it looks like it's $125, which is not cost prohibitive, which is which hopefully is a good thing for folks because I'm offering some scholarships to. Okay, great, great. So
Cheryl Poe:if that is for some people cost prohibitive. Parents have donated to kids, I have said I've had my white clients want to support this and donate tickets. It's just been wonderful.
Guy Stephens:Fantastic. And of course, you've got the school full schedule here as well. And you can kind of click through and see Friday, Saturday and Sunday, what the sessions are going to be you can learn more about the speakers here. And of course, you can share this on social media, which is a great thing to be able to do. So you got a lot of information here.
Cheryl Poe:Yeah, we'll see some more. Yeah, the other way.
Guy Stephens:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. roundtable discussions. Yeah, this looks like a fantastic event. So again, I put that link in the chat here. are so that people can click on that and find out more or register if they want to. Anything else you want to tell me about the website here, it looks like we cover most of the information.
Cheryl Poe:Yeah, just just that if you scroll all the way down, you can see,
Guy Stephens:oh, wow, I thought I reached the end here. Okay.
Cheryl Poe:So when you can see each individual presenter, who they are, what the name of their company is of Fido, a description, the name of the title of their presentation, it just, you know, it's a great way for you to play around, okay, it's gonna work for me, and maybe I can't reach this one, but I can do the other one. But it also gives you a lot of information and wonderful information. The wonderful thing is that you will learn in this conference. Quality, quality, I mean, I've been so lucky to get some of these these speakers they are, you know, some of them are nationally recognized nationally sought out and sought out speakers. And then some of them are kind of new to the process. And for me, when I say here, I'm talking like four years, we have parents, this is this is you go back to that one. This is a really interesting one. This is he's a pastor served as a pastor out of Florida. And he's in a situation where, you know, a grandma and grandparents raising grandchildren, and then having to deal with, like, what learning and rethinking with disabilities, you know, because in the black culture of the black communities, especially about my time of growing up, disability was something to be ashamed of. It was something to either pretend it didn't exist for a triangle, we didn't need it either a child it doesn't work. So well, their stories really need coming from a perspective of being older. Right? And what that meant, if you had a child to, to now in the lessons learned, so they're going to be one of them handled lists, that that position black parents roundtables, lessons.
Guy Stephens:Yeah, that's fantastic. And in, you know, you hear us you're saying, like, you know, hey, when, when I was growing up, this is how it is, and what I appreciate about the work that you have been doing, as long as I've known you, and for much longer than that, is how you are one of the people out there changing it, right, we've got a long way to go on all of this. But, you know, without people out there Cheryl, like you that are really you leading the way and getting people to, you know, think about things differently and look at things differently. I mean, that's what's really important. And this is an event that's all about kind of continuing that right, it's all about that's great opportunity
Cheryl Poe:and opportunity for people who are often ignored, right? To have a space and come and feel safe. around the idea of talking about what it means to be black and just talking about what it means to raise a disabled child. And then learning learning skills so that we can change, we can change those statistics, you know, that absolutely as a community where we can do things, and I really am hopeful that the kind of information that we're going to be sharing in this kind of path, because this is my first one and and it was it was like had to work through my fear of wanting to do it. And now that I've done it, I'm like, Oh, yes, yes, this is this is working. And mainly because the excitement from people like credible to some wonderful opportunity, this is so needed. So and this does not exclude white people. I want to be very clear. I saw you leave a comment and I have had to leave a comment.
Guy Stephens:Just you know, that was actually a spammer that was trying to leave I guess I guess you know, you've made it on your your live broadcast when you begin to get spammers that start sharing links to try to trick people into going to so that's all
Cheryl Poe:I have because I've had to delete some comments on my sponsor of ads. Will justice you know, they see Agnes network automatically, you know, the negative or not negative day they feel the need to I think in some ways want to cause harm to people wanting to come together to learn and saying very, very, very cool things and and that's why I think we need to have a space where we can talk about this and know that it's okay. But we encourage In fact, if you go up to see Kaitlyn, I mean we actually have and we encourage that if you want to come and learn more there she is. Part of the opening with me she's a professor at Howard University. She He's been working with me for about six months. And doing some work looking at the data in Virginia, it's not good, is not good. And she's been helping me work through that we kind of written it out a little, I shouldn't say. We've identified as far as issues with students with disabilities in Virginia. So she'll be talking with us and also teaching later, for other people in their communities that want to know how to use the data, and how to get to the data, so that they can go back and use that information if they want to cause systemic complaints, or use that as leverage to talk to people that have the power and authority to make some changes in their own district. So that's really the key pieces in this and not only will you learn what you can do for your individual child,
Guy Stephens:sorry, sorry, I was trying to remove the screen to make you and I large, and I removed the wrong one. Sorry about that.
Cheryl Poe:That's okay. That's one of the exciting things not only for themselves, in their individual situations, they're gonna learn tools and resources and what they want to do when they want to do something for their community. We actually have Linda Carrington, she's going to be at the end talking about, hey, maybe you want to start your own nonprofit, maybe there's work that you're doing that you don't realize could be a nonprofit, that maybe you make a connection here, and you're able to work together on a project. Because we
Guy Stephens:can make change, right? I mean, the work that you're doing makes changes, you know, the work that we're doing here at the Alliance, things change. I love encouraging people to do that. I mean, you know, I, you know, when when I started the lions, I never intended really to start an organization and then one day to quit my job and just focus on this. But you know, we can do it, we can make change, and I love kind of bringing community together and connecting people that are really I mean, this, this event is about building community. So I think this is fantastic. We do have a question here. And Karen, Karen just mentioned ripples, make ripples. I absolutely agree with that. We did have a question here. And I think we have time maybe to get to a question too. And we were just going to do this. It's kind of a short event. So we don't have the usual full time here. But Darlene asked, with a current climate, how are you moving advocacy forward? Do you feel more pushback now than in the past?
Cheryl Poe:Definitely, I live in the state of Virginia, and it's always it's no worse, or no better. And, and what I have done is focused more so on systemic systemic issues, in fact, and I was going to try and save to bring it up, but I'll share it with you later, I was able to follow along with the Civil Rights Complaint and get to the Virginia Department of Education with some other advocates for disability discrimination, not providing services during the COVID time, and then we'll do some other things in there relating to our dispute resolution, since it's just been horrendous. They picked it up. They picked up the one issue. So right now, I haven't blocked off the civil rights complaint that the Attorney General of Virginia is dealing with, because of the systemic damages that have been happening students with disabilities. So my next step with that, right, and that's why I'm working with Assistant Professor Howard is to use that same idea that this has been an issue from the data, they have to file a complaint about racial and disability discrimination, State of Virginia, because when Jr is always always in the negative when it comes to any of the outcomes for black students. And I don't know if you guys know that about the class action lawsuit that was filed against the Virginia Department of Education for their hearing officers being disgustingly horrible. And if we're willing in honor of parents, are you familiar? You're looking
Guy Stephens:I'm trying to remember and sometimes my my head no,
Cheryl Poe:I just wanted, I think to answer that question is, is this is how you move forward, because what they did was they got kicked out of the court, right, they couldn't get the certification for our class. And then some other procedural issues, not not that the case was the substance but procedural issues. So what they've done is filed a complaint with the Virginia Attorney General to investigating violations. So it's a different it's a bigger piece, because individually can help that individual, but in order to make systemic significant change, moving forward is to a system in place. Sure, sure. And of course, push back
Guy Stephens:that systemic Yeah. And but here's the thing, here's, here's what I know about troppo is that you may get pushback, but you push harder. And you know, you, you take things up to a another scale. I mean, sometimes, sometimes the help a kid, you've got to fix a system. And that's what you're doing. And that's fantastic work. Well, we are just about out of time here. So we're gonna have to wrap up. But I have put the links again in the chat for people to learn about the event. And hopefully, people will. And you know, you know, the drill here, if you're watching us live, or even watch us later. Share this, please share this and communities. Share this with your your friends, your you know, whoever you work with your colleagues. You know, this is how change happens. And Cheryl, I want to thank you for taking some time today to join me it was it was great to see you. You know, it seems like we have emails every once in a while back and forth. But I always enjoy the opportunity to save face and
Cheryl Poe:newsletters if you guys already when his listeners was leveraging gotta sign up. They're greatly Awesome.
Guy Stephens:Thank you so much. I sure Well, I'm sure he's getting ready to head off to college. So we'll have to catch up on all that later. I'm going to let our audience go here. You can hang around for a second. But thank you, everybody for watching. And we will see you again. We have actually another special event tomorrow where we've got a lot of stuff going on. So we're with Dr. Laurie estatales. Tomorrow really having a very candid conversation about restraint and seclusion from a kind of a perspective of neuroscience and how we can do better. So I'll see you again tomorrow if you're here. Thanks. Bye bye
