Empathy, to realize where somebody is coming from or to realize that body language means that. At its core, autism is a social disorder, its a neurological disorder that people are born with, and its a big big spectrum. It wasnt until i was a teenager that i heard autism in relation to myself, and i rejected it. I was very loud, i took up a lot of space, and it was because mostly taking up space let everybody else know where i existed in the world. I didnt like to talk to people really, and then, when i did i overshared. I was very difficult to be around. But the friends that i have are very close. I click with our atypical kiddos than other people do. In experience i remember when i was five years old and not wanting people to touch me because it hurt. I remember throwing chairs because i could not regulate my own emotions and it did not mean that i was a bad kid it meant that i couldnt cope. I grew up in a family of behavioral psychologists and i got development cal developmental psychology from all sides. I recognize that my experience is just a very small picture of that and not everybodys in a position to have a family thats as supportive but theres also a community thats incredible helpful and wonderful and open and there for you in your moments of need. It was like two or three years of conversations before i was like you know what . Im just going to do this and i went out and got my prescription for hormones and started transitioning medically, even though i had already been living as a male. I have a twoyearold. The person who im now married to is my husband for about two years, and then started gaining weight and wasnt sure, so i webt went and talked with the doctor at my clinic and he said well, testosterone is basically Birth Control so theres no way you can be pregnant. I found out i was pregnant at 6. 5 months. My whole mission is to kind of normalize adults like me. I think ive finally found my calling in Early Intervention which is here, kind of what we do. I think the access to irrelevant kacare for parents is intentionally confusing. When i did the processspective search for autism for my own child, it was confusing. We have a place where children can be children, but its very confusing. I always out myself as an adult with autism. I think its helpful when you know where can your child go. How im choosing to help is to give children that would normally not be allowed to have children in the same respect kids that have three times as much work to do as their peers or kids who do odd things, like, beach therapy. How do speech therapy. How do you explain that to the rest of their class . I want that to be a normal experience. I was working on a certificate and kind of getting think Early Childhood credits br iefore i started working here and we did a section on transgender inclusion inclusion, which is a big issue here in San Francisco because we attract lots of queer families, and the teacher approached me and said i dont really feel comfortable or qualified to talk about this from like a cisgendered straight persons perspective, would you mind talking a little bit with your own experience, and im like absolutely. So im now one of the guest speakers in that particular class at city college. I love growing up here. I love what San Francisco represents. The idea of leaving has never occurred to me. But its a place that i need to fight for to bring it back to what it used to be to allow all of those little kids that come from really unsafe environments to move somewhere safe. What ive done with my life is work to make all of those situations better to bring a little bit of light to all those kind of issues that were still having hoping to expand into a little bit more of a Resource Center and this Resource Center would be more those new parents who have gotten that diagnosis and we want to be this one centralized place that allows parents to breathe for a second. I would love to empower from the bottom up from the kid level, and from the top down, from the teacher level. So many things that i would love to do that are all about changing peoples minds about certain chunts like the Transgender Community or the autistic community. I would like my daughter to know theres no wrong way to go through life. Everybody experiences pain and grief and sadness and that all of those things are temporary. Coping with covid19 with chris manning. Hi. Im chris manners, and youre watching coping with covid19. My guest today is tanya peterson. Shes the director of the San Francisco zoo on sloat boulevard, and shes here today to talk about how the zoos managing during the pandemic and how theyre reopening. Tanya thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. Im really pleased to hear that the zoo has reopened again. Thats great news. Can you tell us what changes youve made to make visitors to the zoo feel comfortable and safe when theyre there. I understand now you have to make reservations, and theres only a limited Number Available each day. We were making changes before shelter in place. Fortunately, because we work with animals, and we have a vet hospital onsite, we have the safe coverings before the shelter in place. While we were closed, we made some internal and external changes. The first one, i guess, would be online reservations. You now need to make reservations to visit the zoo, just like your favorite dinner restaurant. That is an effort to slow down congestion. Try to keep everything smooth and we can control the number of families coming in over the course of time. Thats great. What about the indoor exhibits and the playground. Are those off limits now . Well theyre not off limits but the playground we had we had started Child Care Program for essential workers even when we were closed and the playground is used exclusively by our Child Care Programs. So if you can think of the zoo 100 acres, about a good third of it right now is reserved for child care so what we do is we have the weve got the children in their safe pods. Theyre with each other for three weeks. Theyre in a controlled environment, and in the morning, one pod has the playground, we disinfect, and in the afternoon another pod comes. All indoor spaces were closed before the shelter in place. The one thing im asked most frequently about is the train. We have a 100yearold train, and as soon as we can disinfect that well get that open because thats the number one question i guess, when is the train reopening. Is there a map how youre supposed to walk around the zoo . Yes. In certain areas, we created a oneway path. We try to make it fun. Theyre generally in the shape of bear paws and colored you know follow the blue bear paws follow the red bear paws but weve tried to make it fun. When children have not been out for three months they were climbing anything and everything. We didnt anticipate that so we put coverings open water fountains, statue signs. Kids had been cooped up so they went crazy the first few days. More control in place. That sounds great. How did the zoos residents respond to a lack of visitors. Did you observe any behavioral differences . Absolutely. We have some shy residents, gorillas and orangs. We have a male orangutan, he would blow me kisses. The rhinos they would come out when i would feed them. How does it feel to have the zoo open again to the general public, even if its a limited fashion . It feels fantastic. Im a mother, and i know its been hard on kids. To be able to open safely outdoors were one of the few zoos on an ocean, so youve got the coastal air coming through. We see families or selfascribed pods coming through. Its been great for our staff and for our visitors. Its been heart warming, all the true experiences the first few days. Clearly. You have a lot of mouths to feed. How did you cope with the pandemic so far . Were you able to get some Financial Assistance and how can viewers contribute if theyd like to . Well thank you. We received some help, but we burned through that quickly and we received some financial donations. We burned through a lot of our funding, and we were really feeling it. All of the people who supported us and hung in there, i thank you. You can join as a member. Its a tax deduction. David attenborough said it best. If the zoo becomes extinction we all do. In the wild poachers are getting the best of the wild animals animals, but i think with the help of the zoo and the community, we can save the animals. Where can i go if i want to donate . You can go to sfzoo. Org. You can join, become a member or make a donation. It takes about 30,000 a day to feed all of our 2,000 animals so you can pick how you want to help. Well i appreciate you coming onto the show today, miss peterson. Thank you. The animals and i thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Youve been watching coping with covid19. For sfgovtv im chris manners. Thanks for watching. The market is one of our vehicles for reaching out to public and showing them how to prepare delicious simple food. People are amazed that the library does things like that. Biblio bistro is a Food Education program. It brings such joy to people. It teaches them life skills that they can apply anywhere and it encourages them to take care of themselves. My name is leaf hillman and im a librarian and biblio bistro is my creation. Im a former chef and i have been incubating this idea for many years. We are challenged to come up with an idea that will move the library into the future. This inspired me to think, what can we do around cooking . What can i do around cooking . We were able to get a cart. The charlie cart is designed to bring cooking to students in Elementary Students that has enough gear on it to teach 30 students cooking. So when i saw that i thought bingo, thats what were missing. You can do cooking classes in the library, but without a kitchen, its difficult. To have everything contained on wheels thats it. I do cooking demonstrations out at the market every third wednesday. I feature a seafood, vegetable, and i show people how to cook the vegetable. A lot of our residents live in s. R. O. S single resident occupancies and they dont have access to full kitchens. You know, a lot of them just have a hot plate, a microwave, and the thing that biblio bistro does really well is cook food accessible in season and make it available that day. We handout brochures with the featured recipe on the back. This recipe features mushrooms, and this brochure will bring our public back to the library. Libraries are about a good time. I hired a former chef. Shes the tickle queen at the ramen shop in rockwood. We get all ages. We get adults and grandparents and babies and, you know schoolage kids and its just been super terrific. I was a bit reluctant because i train teachers and adults. I dont train children. I dont work with children, and i find it very interesting and a bit scary, but working here really taught me a lot you know how easily you can influence by just showing them what we have and its not threatening, and its tasty and fun. I make it really fun with kids because i dont look like a teacher. In the mix, which is our team center, we have programs for our kids who are age 13 to 18 and those are very hands on. The kids often design the menu. All of our programs are very interactive. Today, we made pasta and garlic bread and some sauce. Usually, i dont like bell pepper in my sauce, but i used bell pepper in my sauce, and it complemented the sauce really well. I also grated the garlic on my bread. I never thought about that technique before but i did it and it was so delicious. We try to teach them techniques where they can go home and tell their families i made this thing today, and it was so delicious. Theyre kind of addicted to these foods, these processed foods, like many people are. I feel like we have to do what we can to educate people about that. The reality is we have to live in a world that has a lot of choices that arent necessarily good for you all the time. This is interesting, but its a reaction to how children are brought up. It is fastfood, and the apple is a fastfood, and so that sort of changes the way they think about convenience, how eating apple is convenient. One of the things that i love about my program out at the market is the surprise and delight on peoples faces when they finally taste the vegetable. Its been transformative for some people. They had never eaten those vegetables before but now they eat them on a regular basis. All they require is a hot plate and a saute pan, and they realize that theyre able to cook really healthy, and its also tasty. They also understand the importance of the connection that were making. These are our Small Business owners that are growing our food and bringing it fresh to the market for them to consume, and then, im helping them consume it by teaching them how to cook. It connects people to the food that theyre buying. The magic of the classes in the Childrens Center and the team center is that the participants are cooking the food themselves and once they do that they understand their connection to the food to the tools, and it empowers them. Were brokering new experiences for them so that is very much whats happening in the biblio bistro program. We are introducing kids many times to new vocabulary. Names of seasonings, names of vegetables names of what you call procedures. I had my little cooking experience. All i cooked back then was Grilled Cheese and scrambled eggs. Now, i can actually cook curry and a few different thing zblz and. And the parents are amazed that what were showing them to cook is simple and inexpensive. I didnt know this was so easy to make. Ive only bought it in the market. Those comments have been amazing and yeah, its been really wonderful. We try to approach everything here with a well just try it. Just try it once, and then, before you know it, its gone. A lot of people arent sure how to cook cauliflower or kale or fennel or whatever it is, and leah is really helpful at doing that. I think having someone actually teaching you here is a great experience. And its the art of making a meal for your family members and hope that they like it. I think they should come and have some good food good produce that is healthy and actually very delicious. Cooking is one of my biggest passions, to be able to share, like my passion with others, and skills to h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h