Blog

A teenage brain is a fascinating, still-changing place. There's a lot going on: social awareness, risk-taking, peer pressure; all are heightened during this period. Until relatively recently, it was thought that the brain was only actively developing during childhood, but in the last two decades, researchers have confirmed that the brain continues to develop during adolescence — a period of time that can stretch from the middle school years into early adulthood. "We were always under the...

There is a haunting sense of calm at the Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. Better known as the National Lynching memorial, the space opened on April 26 as a project of the Equal Justice Initiative , a nonprofit that provides legal support to those unjustly persecuted in the criminal justice system. EJI spent just over 3 years and $15 million dollars to create the 8,400-square-foot museum and memorial, which is dedicated to the more than 4,400 victims of racial violence...

STOP SNAP FRAUD! Bright red signs, with instructions like the one above, are hard to miss. But chances are, if you commute regularly into Washington, D.C., you might've seen this exact message plastered throughout D.C. Metro stations and on buses in recent weeks. The posters , sponsored by the D.C. Department of Human Services, broadcast a clear message about Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamp, recipients: "To purchase items other than food or qualified products is a...

Denise Fitzgerald’s property abuts the string of quiet, empty lots that line Ewing Street in Jackson, Mississippi. Recently she was leaf-blowing detritus shed by the enormous sycamore tree dominating the yard of her tidy Habitat for Humanity home. She says she’d cut the tree down herself but knows it’s big enough to take out both her house and the house beside her if she dare try it. Fitzgerald is familiar with the empty lots of Ewing Street, just a few blocks from Jackson State University.

New research from York University suggests that minority children as young as six years old show an implicit pro-White racial bias when exposed to images of both White and Black children. But how ingrained these biases become and whether they persist into late childhood and adulthood might depend on their social environment. Faculty of Health Professor Jennifer Steele conducted two studies with graduate student Meghan George and her former PhD student Amanda Williams, now at the School of...

For more than a decade, the nation’s juvenile justice systems have steadily cut back on unnecessary use of incarceration for young people. The reduction in the use of youth lock-ups have been good for kids and for public safety. Reforms that resulted in incarcerating fewer kids, statistically improve the chances of success for youth when they become adults, while also corresponding with the steady decline in juvenile crime during the same period. Yet, according to an important new report...

Affordable housing is already a hot button political issue. Housing advocates have long pointed out the lack of affordable options in big cities with booming tech sectors, like San Francisco , but where does that leave the rest of the country ? We wanted to find out, so we created a new map that illustrates how much an average worker would need to earn to afford a typical two-bedroom apartment in each state. We found the data for our map through the National Low Income Housing Coalition...

On an ACEs Connection webinar on Monday, Dr. Andrew Seaman, an assistant professor at Oregon Health & Science University, showed how he navigates his students through the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). And, in an unusual twist for a webinar, Seaman and O’Nesha Cochran, a peer mentor with the Mental Health Association of Oregon, role-played doctor-patient interactions to show how to develop the skills to communicate with patients with high ACE scores. About 90 people...

To me, “May is Mental Health Month” has always seemed like an excuse to hold an annual four-week-long commercial for Pharma and bio-psychiatry. Under the guise of raising “awareness” and reducing “stigma,” the PR reps out there make it safe for us average Joe’s to admit how bad we feel or how stressed out we are. Then they tell us what our problem is (“mental illness”) and conveniently offer us the solutions they are selling (pharmaceuticals and professional treatment). It’s like the soda...

Janai Mestrovich (BS/MS, Family & Child Development), teacher and developer of 'Superkid Power' (Ashland, OR) passed this along to me regarding how she uses finger activated mood card to measure temperature and kid stress levels: 40 Pre-K children learned how to measure their stress level this morning by measuring hand temp. with mood cards. Blue, happy-peaceful-very calm; Green, calm; Red, tight muscles/upset; Black Tense/grit teeth. We chanted and drummed appropriately - tense drumming...

If you are working with teens to plan bright futures, we would like to offer you a Sample Lesson Plan from our Healthy Foundations for Future Families curriculum. For the past 10 years, our organization Educate Tomorrow’s Parents (ETP), has been working upstream to prevent Adverse Childhood Experiences by educating teens before they form families. Our science-based curriculum meets essential standards for secondary school health education. There are several components, including a student...

Beyond Consequences is excited to announce that our Call for Proposals for the 2018 Fall Trauma-Informed School Conference has been extended. If you have a great story to share about your experience in working with students who’ve had adverse childhood experiences, we would love to hear from you! Here are some examples of sessions that fit in at our nationally recognized conference: Administrative/School-Wide Track • Mindfulness Instead of Suspension • Special Education Law & Advocacy •...