April 2022

By Amy Westervelt, Drilled, April 5, 2022 Every few years the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases an assessment, which consists of several reports prepared by three working groups. Working Group I focuses on the scientific evidence for climate change; Working Group II on the impacts, adaptation and vulnerabilities; and Working Group III on mitigation, what we can do about it (and what's stopping us). The 2018 IPCC report got a LOT of media attention, more than any...

By Anya Kamenetz, Photo: Andreea Campeanu/Getty Images, National Public Radio, April 5, 2022 It's Tuesday morning and Hanna Kudrinova's 5th grade English class is signed on to Google Meet. Kudrinova starts like a lot of teachers everywhere, with a check-in. She asks the students to turn on their cameras and show a thumbs up if they're happy, thumbs down if they are sad, and sideways if they are feeling so-so. Today, Maksym Radzievsky, a boy with a round face and a striped shirt who seemingly...

Recently Jameelah Hanif, Ingrid Cockhren, and Mathew Portell discussed parenting education and how it relates to the promotion of positive child experiences and the prevention of adverse childhood experiences. Parenting education is important, and here’s a useful simile. Trauma caused by unsupportive and harmful parenting is like a powerful tsunami threatening the coast, whereas conventional parenting education is like one man with a shovel trying to stop the flooding. Conventional parenting...

Mistakes Research shows that children with a growth mindset – the belief that intelligence is not fixed and that they can work hard and practice to improve – understand mistakes as opportunities to learn. In your visits, you can try taking a simple mistake – like closing the computer when you still need it, or dropping a bandage on the floor – and model for children how they can grow from that experience. You may say something like, “Whoops, now I know to keep it on the table next time” or...

Website and Toolkit Now Live Gain new guidance and tools for communicating about childhood adversity. Visit BuildingBetterChildhoods.Org Social Current and Prevent Child Abuse America teamed up to develop new tools to help us all build the public understanding and political will needed to prevent and address childhood adversity. Grounded in recent research from the FrameWorks Institute, the tools are designed for communicating with media, funders, policymakers, and the general public.

By Jocelyn Gecker, Photo: Jae C. Hong/AP Photo, Associated Press, April 4, 2022 As Benito Luna-Herrera teaches his seventh-grade social studies classes, he is on alert for signs of inner turmoil. And there is so much of it these days. One of his 12-year-old students felt her world was falling apart. Distance learning had upended her friendships. Things with her boyfriend were verging on violent. Her home life was stressful. “I’m just done with it,” the girl told Luna-Herrera during the...

By Taneasha White, Image: Jess Murphy, PsychCentral, April 4, 2022 When searching for the right therapist, I have a few nonnegotiable factors. If I’m expected to trust someone with my mental wellness and share some of the most vulnerable parts of myself, then feeling safe and understood is a top priority. For me, this means vetting practitioners who are: women or gender nonconforming Queer-affirming Black Granted, checking all of these boxes hasn’t been easy, especially when you factor in...

By Thomas Courtney, Photo: Thomas Courtney, EdSource, April 5, 2022 T he unanimous conclusion in educational literature has been that 2020 and 2021 will be a generational burden on kids. And it’s true. This pandemic has hit us all hard: educators, parents, and most powerfully, kids. We need to talk about ways to address it, correct it, and be mindful of how our tax dollars can address it. Yet, there’s something quite special happening in my classroom right now. It’s something that has been...

By Washington Post Editorial Board, Photo: Yuriko Nakao/Reuters, The Washington Post, April 5, 2022 Every half-decade or so, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases an authoritative report on climate change, reflecting the consensus view among a vast number of experts and government officials. The latest installment , on the path humanity must take to avoid punishing climate consequences, came out on Monday. Another analysis filled with dire warnings, the...

By Anonymous, Photo: Veryan Dale/Alamy, The Guardian, April 5, 2022 Last week, while watching an outdated DVD about “growing and changing” with my year 2 class, a child in the programme blew out their birthday candles and shared slices of the cake with their friends. Outrage in the classroom ensued. “Miss, was that before corona? That’s disgusting!” Birthday parties are a small part of what young children have missed over the past two years. Since the first lockdown began, children have...

I was honored to meet Dr. Nadine Burke Harris a few years ago. Click the link below to read our newsletter! https://conta.cc/3x3sUqi

By Jennifer Jones, 4/7/22, https://positiveexperience.org/category/blog/ At HOPE, our vision is for all children to have safe and equitable access to the Four Building Blocks . As April is Child Abuse Prevention Month, we want to share just some of the work that is moving that vision forward. Today, we are talking to Jennifer Jones, Chief Strategy Officer at Prevent Child Abuse America. Jennifer promotes child abuse prevention and positive childhood experiences in her daily work. Here, she...