April 2016

There she sat at a fast-food restaurant, single mom alone with her daughter. The place was mostly empty. A worker was mopping the floor, and the little girl was fascinated with his chore. Her mom was glued to her cell phone. The little girl’s dinner sat at the table, untouched except for a few french fries she’d poke in her mouth as she ran back to the table every so often. Maybe it’s because I’m cognizant of what kids of divorce go through and aware of how tough parenting alone can be, but...

An exciting initiative—Building Community Resilience collaborative established by Nemours (part of Moving Health Care Upstream )— is underway in five communities across the country to help child health systems connect with community-based resources to address social determinants (e.g., housing and access to public transportation) in places where children live, learn and play. This post by ACEs Connection member Wendy Ellis includes a short video (less than 3 minutes) about the initiative and...

Over the years, this column has offered up “3 Things Students Wish Teachers Knew,” “3 Things Parents Wish Teachers Knew,” and “5 Things Teachers Wish Parents Knew.” Recently, it was called to my attention that I have never written about what school counselors might like readers to know about their profession

Like most complex subjects, no single label will ever suffice to describe Dove Springs, the Southeast Austin neighborhood where I grew up, but here are a few: Mexi­can-American, working-class, poor, overlooked, humble, proud, violent, peaceful, ugly, beautiful. Among the labels that are least likely to come up: affluent, privileged. One of the challenges facing the neighborhood is literacy. Dove Springs' Consuelo Mendez Middle School is on the Texas Education Agency's 2015 list of schools...

The research, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, used data from a nationally representative sample of over 2,000 American vets who were surveyed twice - once in 2011 and again in 2013 - in a study led by the Veteran's Affairs (VA) National Center for PTSD . Each time, the survey asked the veterans whether they had experienced suicidal thoughts in the past 2 weeks, and also about a host of other factors associated with suicidal thinking. The results showed that around 86% of...

Language is powerful. When we talk about people who come into contact with the criminal justice system and refer to them as “offenders,” “inmates,” or “convicts,” we cause these people’s offenses to linger long after they’ve paid their debt to society. Such labeling is both dehumanizing and stigmatizing, ascribing scarlet letters to people based on actions that arguably represent the worst days of their lives rather than who they are sons, sisters, parents, and community members. After...

There is a growing trend in education, mental health, social services, and health care: becoming trauma-informed. For those in ministry, “trauma informed” can be a confusing phrase, bringing up images we might not naturally associate with the church and its mission and ministry. Trauma results from something that occurs in a person’s life that is experienced as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening. An event, circumstance or series of events that are traumatic leaves lasting...

Last night, I went to the first training West Coast workshop held by the Solutions Journalism Network (SJN), an organization founded by three journalists in 2012 to reshape the way news is told. Basically, the aim is to encourage and train journalists, whether in or outside of newsrooms, to report on news you can use to make changes in your life, your community, and the world. It’s also an approach to uncovering hidden stories, ones that many reporters don’t ask. When writing a story about...

Laura Porter watched as ACE data put an end to arguments. When she worked as a liaison between Washington state elected officials and community groups, she listened to endless squabbles about which problem—youth violence, substance abuse, child maltreatment—was most important and what type of intervention most urgent and effective. ACE research demonstrated that all these concerns shared a common root. “When people learn about ACEs, they change their thinking,” Laura says. “They stop...

London’s red-hot housing market of late is by now an international legend, drip-feeding the media with tragicomic stories of insane pricing on a weekly basis—from the $710 cupboard to the one-bedroom flat on sale for $37 million . Now a new report out this week details some of the harmful social effects that this boom in housing costs has wrought. Unsurprisingly, they are many. The report , from the independent think tank Centre for London , shows that the rise in housing costs are far more...

It was in 2011, after Camilo Pineda Obando moved to Pacifica, California, a small city just south of San Francisco, when his perception of reality took a sudden, dark shift. It wasn’t the first time the 21-year-old aspiring music producer had experienced episodes of anxiety and paranoia, but this was different. Walking down the street, he felt like the protagonist in a nightmarish video game populated with mysterious characters, some good, others evil. An agonizing sense of responsibility to...

Pushing up the cuffs of his plaid shirt and adjusting his glasses, the ninth-grader Colton Gaudette looks across the small classroom conference table. “Welcome to my student-led conference,” he says. “Thank you for inviting me,” answers his mother, Terry Gaudette, sitting next to Colton’s adviser and biology teacher. This meeting, which happens twice a year, has replaced the old format of parent-teacher conferences at Pittsfield Middle High School, a rural New Hampshire campus that takes a...