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Yoga is a great activity for children and adults and is easy to do just about anywhere! Children need to have multiple healthy ways to express their feelings and have opportunities for mind and body awareness. Yoga is beneficial because it is... Non-competitive Gender neutral Enhances motor skills and balance Improves listening skills in a fun approach Children can focus on what is happening in the moment A healthy way to express feelings Supports social and emotional learning and...

Busloads of high school students and parents from organizations statewide have trekked to State Board of Education meetings for two years, clamoring for changes they believe will improve school climate. In moving testimony, students described schools where they feel disconnected, misunderstood and often under-challenged. “If you are serious about closing the achievement gap, and bringing equity to our most vulnerable students, don’t continue to neglect school climate,” Armon Matthews, a...

This time last year, the top three most misbehaved boys at Equette Jones' elementary school were from the same family. As assistant principal, it fell to Jones to figure out how to solve the problem. Other educators might prescribe detentions, suspensions, extra tutoring help, or even a doctor’s appointment to be evaluated for an attention-deficit issue. But Jones sensed that the problem ran deeper — and she had a solution. That's why Jones' school worked with an organization called First...

There’s been a fight at Marrero Middle School. Two sixth graders traded insults during football practice, someone threw a punch, and soon enough they were on the ground with a ring of students egging them on. A few years ago, a fight like this might have ended with someone being suspended, or even arrested. But over the past year and a half, the New Orleans-area middle school has rebuilt its entire approach to discipline. Now, the two boys are sent to John Kulakowski, a teacher who splits...

Participation in high-quality early childhood education has persistent effects on academic performance and might save a lot of money for school districts, according to a new study out Thursday. The study, from the American Educational Research Association , found long-lasting payoffs in three areas: increased high school graduation rates, reduced special education placement and reduced instances of grade retention. "Those are important outcomes," said Greg Duncan, professor of education at...

Alysia Ferguson Garcia remembers the day two years ago that ended in her making a call to Child Protective Services. One of her students walked into drama class with what Garcia thought of as a “bad attitude” and refused to participate in a script reading. “I don’t care if you’ve had a bad day,” Garcia remembers saying in frustration. “You still have to do some work.” In the middle of class, the student offered an explanation for her behavior: Her mom’s boyfriend had been sexually abusing...

Picture this. Its 10:00 am and you have had to evacuate students from your class. There are posters on the floor, several of them ripped up. Pens and markers thrown across the room. You have one student, Carly, standing in front of you, with a chair raised over her head, threatening to throw it at you. Carly’s eyes are glazed over, she keeps calling you “mum” and you’re worried she is going to step onto a shard of your favourite coffee mug she broke a few minutes back. What are you going to...

As California’s housing shortage intensifies, the number of homeless children is expected to climb. Since 2014, the number of homeless youth in California has jumped 20 percent, to more than 202,329, and accounts for nearly 4 percent of the overall public school population. Homeless children are enrolled in nearly every district in the state, according to the California Homeless Youth Project . An EdSource special project explored the issue in detail, and includes a map showing the number of...

Child Adolesc Psychiatr Clin N Am . 2012 January Responding to Students with PTSD in Schools Sheryl Kataoka, MD, MSHS, Audra Langley, PhD, Marleen Wong, PhD, Shilpa Baweja, MA, and Bradley Stein, MD, PhD The prevalence of trauma exposure among youth is a major public health concern, with a third of adolescents nationally reporting that they have been in a physical fight in the past twelve months and 9% having been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property. Studies have...

An experienced kindergarten teacher contacted me the other day. She reported that she and teachers in her district have seen a spike in children entering kindergarten having suffered trauma. Distraught, she said that she and her colleagues are not trained to meet these children’s needs, and there are not enough services in the schools to help. This phenomenon is sadly not unique. The New York Council of School Superintendents recently issued the results of its annual survey. In 2017, for the...

Teaching Tolerance is a wonderful resource for educators, librarians, caregivers, or anyone who comes into contact with youth. This new section on their website " The Moment : Defending DACA and Busting Immigration Myths" is devoted to DACA information and resources. " The White House and Justice Department this week announced plans to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. How will this decision affect your students, their families and even your colleagues? Learn...

Apparently the 8th grade teacher thought that by crumpling the student’s essay and then tossing it into the trash, he was effectively making the point that the student needed to be “better prepared for high school.” At least this is what he told the student as he made the histrionic gesture, and later the parent when she questioned his methods. “He is ready, he’s here,” replied the parent. That the child had suffered a deeply traumatic event earlier in his life was not unknown to the teacher...