This is by far my most vulnerable blog. I feel the need to write it, yet am scared to death to share it. However a blog isn’t a blog unless you write about something personal and share it with others – even complete strangers! So, here we...
Director and producer Vic Compher’s documentary film, Portraits of Professional Caregivers: Their Passion. Their Pain , takes a deeper look at the causes of and treatments for what’s called secondary traumatic stress, a condition commonly...
Do you work with a disadvantaged population? Do you often feel like it is difficult to understand the behavior of some of your clients or constituents. Ever wonder how some people can be so short-tempered, or withdrawn when working with...
Attention deficit disorder, defiance, bullying — a multitude of issues that stand between children and their ability to learn may actually be behaviors they learned in self-defense. “For a lot of these children, when we look under a...
Walking quickly toward the Bronx Criminal Court, Diva pulls out a Newport menthol, shields the cigarette from the wind, and flicks her lighter twice, ’til it catches. “Take a trip or something, that’s what I want to do,”...
Steven Kim begins his presentation with a question: What words do you associate with gangs? Even amongst this group of youth counselors and educators at the Koreatown Youth and Community Center during a gathering last May, the responses veer...
When President Obama spoke to the Democratic National Convention in Colorado seven years ago, he tried to call a truce in one of the nation's long-running social debates. "We may not agree on abortion. But surely we can agree on reducing the...
You may have noticed the recent media attention being paid to the Compton Unified School District lawsuit ( NPR and LA Times ). The lawsuit has been filed on behalf of eight Compton students and alleges that the school...
By the time DeAngelo Cortijo was 14, he had been in more than a dozen foster homes. He had run away and lived on the streets for months, and he had been diagnosed with bipolar and anxiety disorders, attachment disorder, intermittent explosive...
What follows is the text of a “sermon” that I gave as a “congregational reflection” to an all White audience at the Bethel Congregational United Church of Christ on Sunday, June 28th. The sermon was begun...
Shuah Jones, 15, stuffed clothes under her bed blankets in the shape of a body, grabbed her diary and Bible, and crept downstairs. Wearing a long blue linen skirt and clunky buckled sandals, she opened the door, slipped outside, and paused to...
“There is no science without fancy, and no art without facts,” Vladimir Nabokov famously proclaimed . Today, hardly anyone embodies this sentiment more fully than Brené Brown , who came of age as a social...
Much of the conversation around gentrification essentially blames the people moving into urban neighborhoods. This feeling—that anyone who might be described as a gentrifier is doing something wrong—has even spilled into...
California authorities have agreed to sharply limit the number of inmates held in isolation for long periods of time, a major development in the national debate about solitary confinement. The agreement resolves a class-action lawsuit filed by...
On one of the last days of school at Wyoming Indian Elementary School in the spring, Cheryl Williams is playing a game of “8-plus” with Atsa, a first grader with a round, reflective face under a fuzzy thatch of black hair. These...