September 2018

“This is a rich vein of stories that is underreported,” Linda Shaw remarks. “There are more than just problems in the world, and it’s easy to forget [that].” Linda spoke at CRI’s 2018 Beyond Paper Tigers (BPT) conference about her network, Solutions Journalism. The Solutions Journalism Network (SJN) encourages journalists to add more balance to their coverage, to include how people are responding to a problem. It is not advocacy; SJN does not focus on intentions as much as the credible...

Sample Lesson from Superkid Power Teaching Kids to Understand Self Regulation and Responsibility Key concepts from the curriculum are how to breathe deeply to stay calm and how to use that inner calm to control how to respond to whatever is going on around you. First, we teach how to take deep breaths using a 3D prop, called the breathing sphere, that expands and contracts to represent the lungs and diaphragm filling with air along with the teacher counting out the beats of...

The words hit me like a punch to the gut, but they shouldn’t have surprised me. B Lab, the organization I co-founded in 2006, is the nonprofit behind the global B Corporation movement. B Corporations redefine success in business—they compete to be best for the world and meet the most rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. [For more on this story by Jay Coen Gilbert, go to...

Note: This is the first in a series of posts that will explore the myths and realities of America’s urban-rural divide. Here, we provide an overview of the series and of the data and methodology used. Future posts will cover population growth, jobs, wages, college graduates, and knowledge workers across America’s urban and rural communities. The notion of a deep and enduring divide between thriving, affluent, progressive urban areas and declining, impoverished, conservative rural areas has...

When assessing the moral character of others, people cling to good impressions but readily adjust their opinions about those who have behaved badly, according to new research. This flexibility in judging transgressors might help explain both how humans forgive -- and why they sometimes stay in bad relationships, said the study's authors. The research -- conducted by psychologists at Yale, University of Oxford, University College London, and the International School for Advanced Studies --...

The American Academy of Pediatrics released new guidelines on Monday urging parents to accept the preferred gender identity of their children. In a policy statement entitled “Ensuring Comprehensive Care and Support for Transgender and Gender-Diverse Children and Adolescents,” the group recommended “gender-affirming” health care for minors who do not identify with their birth sex. In some cases, this includes “surgical intervention,” as well as using gonadotrophin-releasing hormones to delay...

In a tense hearing on Tuesday, members of the Senate questioned Department of Homeland Security officials about the detention of immigrant families. During the exchanges, the officials repeatedly asserted that they were unaware of any negative psychological effects detention could have on children. The pattern of the officials' answers, first noted by ThinkProgress , stands in stark contrast to the mountain of recent warnings from experts and public-health officials about the dramatic short-...

For my three-year-old son, his playmates are an endless source of entertainment: They meet up at the park to go down the slide, ride tricycles, and conspire in plenty of shenanigans. As he gets older, I hope he will also experience the unparalleled gift of great friendship, with all the delight, reassurance, interconnection, and opportunities for growth that it brings. My hopes are echoed in a new study published in Psychological Science, which found that boys’ friendships are not just fun...

Bryan Stevenson, and acclaimed public interest attorney and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, has committed his life to justice -- and especially to the task of closing the gap between how the criminal justice system operates for poor people and people of color, and America's purported ideal of equal justice for all. But for more than 30 years, Stevenson has embarked on a mission to try. He successfully argued a case in the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that mandatory...

photo/ CCO 1.0 Screening their pediatric patients for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) showed researchers at Montefiore Medical Center that their cut-off score of 4 for referring children and families for help was too high, says Dr. Dana Crawford, a pediatric psychologist and the director of the Trauma-Informed Care Program at Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx, NY. Dr. Dana Crawford Their analysis of the results not only confirmed what pediatricians had suspected, it helped them...

photo/ CCO Children, in what should be the safety of their homes, experience trauma, and it is ruining lives — and perhaps entire ethnic groups. Childhood trauma actually alters the structure of the brain — a result of consistent toxic stress — which is why it’s so difficult to heal an individual and help them attain a healthy life. Dr. Anthony Pico The science that was the springboard for making those linkages began with the now famous Adverse Childhood Experiences Study of over 17,000...

“Last year, I got suspended. And it didn’t work. It only made me more mad.” The young man sat in a circle with 3 of his peers, his teacher, a youth intern and myself. It was the third and final day of the National Center for Restorative Justice Youth Conference and school teams were using this time to reflect on and collaborate on an action plan for implementing Restorative Justice in their schools. He was recounting for us his first-hand experiences with both the punitive system of...