ACEs in Education & COVID-19

ACE's, COVID-19 & Trauma-Aware Education - Changing Schools:

7 Big Shifts in Social Consciousness due to COVID-19

Ethos is, as ethos does -

Are we all on-board with the following ethos?

ETHOS: If a child commits a criminally-prosecutable act then it is a matter for doctors & hospitals, not police & jails (there should be HIPPA protections, not just FERPA)! 

Well? Onboard? 

If one grasps the prior, the following is self-evident:

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT lays the foundation for abuse and occurs in 80% of households and 15% of US schools.

Corporal Punishment implicitly perpetuates, condones and promotes the abuse of children. Perpetuates - Period.

Typically - No company or product leads with the up-front phrase "zero-punishment" when discussing their conscious-discipline or PBIS consequence-matrix-pyramids - There's a reason - The EXACT SAME REASON that most K-12 science textbooks put the word "evolution" in the very last chapter, inexplicably and illogically, given the words direct centrality to every single topic therein. Big-big sigh.

We must provide a way to re-package and re-focus existing ed-services such as consciousdiscipline.org, RethinkEd and other-such around zero-punishment and errors being opportunities. Must.

Corporal-punishment and a culture of reliance on punishment and training dominates in cultures worldwide as compared to reliance on the pleasure of learning alone, no other reward required. This culture of punishment is where the self-perpetuating bio-cultural-neuro-re-wiring first-begins - and where it can most readily be stopped.

***ETHOS - Trauma-Aware 21st-Century Education means understanding that severe ("criminal") misbehavior in children is ALWAYS a Mental Health issue, NEVER a Police issue! - ETHOS***

A huge increase in abuse and neglect is predicted Post-COVID-19.

Post-COVID-19 school-home relationships demand re-imagining in light of the recent ominous decrease in child abuse calls made by children themselves, although all other trusted societal indicators predict a huge anticipated increase in abuse and neglect - experts suggest lessened opportunities to report is the cause.

The COVID-19 epidemic crisis is an opportunity for not just a new but also a "better" normal - We can now;

1) See our homes as being more like schools and schools more like homes.

We can make our home lives more ed-friendly, ed-oriented, & ed-focused while also making our schools more home-like.

For Example:

ZERO-SPANKINGS AT SCHOOL & HOMES, BOTH!

Now is the time to TEACH PARENTS!

Educate Parents - Ending Spankings will remove the single-largest KEY SUPPORTIVE ROOT SOURCE OF GENERATIONAL FAMILIAL ABUSE AND NEGLECT in the U.S.!

NOW is the time to: Teach parents that the moment a Voice or Hand is raised in anger to speedily train a child, real biological change occurs and an opportunity to teach is lost plus learning "why" the child did wrong is lost.

ZERO-PUNISHMENT- Any child will logically focus on the immediate PUNISSHING threat of ones RAISED-HAND or the PUNISHING consequence one too-loudly communicates and YELLS - while the hurt and wrong done by the child to themself or others takes a distant second-place in importance. No child wants to fail or to be unlovable and "bad." We must strive to insure that the original wrong done by the child is understood - this means one must always ask "why?" of the child on order to learn and to connect emotionally also. It is imperative that the hurt (error) that was done is felt with empathy to the same extent it is understood with rationality.

Zero Punishment - To learn more: CONSCIOUSDISCIPLINE.COM

IN OUR HOMES AS IN OUR SCHOOLS:

!!! Errors Are Opportunities to Learn and Teach, Not Opportunities to Test, Punish and Judge. !!!

- Have a small pet & plants in every classroom & SHELVES for donated books & treasures collected & currated by the kids!

- Have a camera & microphone accessible to all parents!

- Have a dog or cat as mascot for every grade - mascot animals stay with students as they advance grade-to-grade every year!

2) Have teachers return first without students and do this for a significant time before having students return to classrooms. Have teachers conduct virtual learning from classrooms - this has multiple benefits. Everyone gets used to LIVE video being sent from classrooms to parents and homes.

3) When 1st opening, do it in slow stages, limit attendance to 50% at a time. Very easy and vert beneficial - This is an opportunity to show that CONNECTION and student-teacher ratios can NEVER be ignored again! We can never allow stident to teacher ratios to rise to the obscene levels typical of the pre-COVID19 era (of 30+ students/teacher)!

4) Use this opportunity to experiment with "flipped" classrooms at least a few days a week, if not always. In a "flipped" class, students attend in-person for one-on-one and small-group teacher and parent-volunteer help w/ homework in school while going home for course instruction and typical classwork.

5) Keep the questions secret before a test? The answers too? Seriously? No more using testing to taunt, tease and torture as if learning is just a pathetic competitive game. Enough! Change the focus from grades to self-mastery - Increase expectations to 100%. Respect children and their interests and capabilities - never ask meaningless questions and never fail to provide answers before and after asking important questions.

Zero punishment? In school, as at home, if something is wrong, find out what and why to learn from the error and correct it. No need for a gradebook when everyone gets 100% correct, eventually. Rewards and punishments for learning? Really? -This is every bit as sensible as using rewards and punishments when training a Golden-Retriever to return balls. We teach students that learning and knowledge are meaningless in and of themselves compared to the competitive sport of school testing when one can get an A+ on a geography test of 100 questions with a 99 and never realize nor care that New Mexico is not another country but another US State. Sigh.

6. Splitting physical classes into halves, thirds, quarters, and more while retaining the engagement of the entire class (virtually) is only possible ONE way! Encourage the universal practice of having STUDY PARTNERS and Study-Groups - alternate each partner's class participation days to ensure the engagement of both/all. This is a HUGE side-benefit in that this is the hands-down proven single-most effective way to improve ones grades and chances for graduation (Period!). Here is a simple yet high-performing solution that literally everyone flat-out largely ignores because it isn't a technology and is believed too simple for any company to patent, trademark, or monetize - but that hopefully will be ignored no more! 

What is this shift in consciousness that the COVID epidemic may bring to functionally ending child abuse & neglect?

- A new perspective on discipline may lessen divisions between home & school to be in closer agreement -finally ENDING the common use of CORPORAL PUNISHMENT in American homes and schools, both.

Post-COVID19 trauma-aware zero-punishment disciplinary practices are increasingly being applied in both homes and schools where:

Errors are Opportunities to Learn and to Teach, NOT opportunities to Punish and Judge!

7.) As a result of COVID19:
SERIAL K-12 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL VIDEO-JOURNALING and writing is already far more universally commonplace. Autobiographical journaling is already well-known by educators to build connection and trust, self-confidence, provide historical perspective and lower stress.

Now there is more:

*** We will soon be able to QUICKLY identify children in distress! ***

Once a large baseline of relevant measurements and observations is created, A.I. analytics can be applied to the video, sound, writing, responses to chatbots and even the timing of individual keystrokes to identify children in distress from subtle changes across multiple observation sources/platforms/pipelines.

Background Facts:

Child abuse is reported in 1 of every 7 adults in the U.S. according to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) and results in permanent life-long & life-altering changes in behavior and neurobiology according to SAMHSA. There are direct biological consequences from the chronic stress and abuse due to any ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience - Visit acesconnection.org to learn more), regardless of its being natural or unnatural (and man-made). ACE events are life-alteringly consequential - and therefore imminently measurable provided the right algorithmic tools and datasets. In other words - No child can suffer an ACE of significance without the detection system knowing it. Importantly therefore: Once well-established, the system will be nearly infallible for this reason - it's functioning is a matter of physics & biology. ACEs cause significant neurobiological changes resulting in repeatably observable & measurable alterations from a previously-established pre-abuse-ACE baseline.