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AS OF 2014, U.S. PUBLIC SCHOOLS REACHED A MAJOR MILESTONE: More than half (51%) of public school students were children of color and/or came from low-income families (qualify for a reduced or free school lunch). That shift represented a clear turning point toward greater diversity in America’s public schools and the need for a corresponding diversity of approaches in the nation’s classrooms. What is at stake if that need is left unmet? For one, resources: Students of color are more likely to...

As a teenager he was sleeping in a park and trying to wash his clothes in a river so he would be clean for school. Matthew Cox was one of too many children who did not get adequate help soon enough, Future Generations Commissioner Sophie Howe has said. She wants the education system and agencies working closer on adverse childhood experiences (ACE). Mr Cox, now 22, works in a call centre and dreams of starting his own landscape gardening company. It is an amazing turnaround for a man who...

The West Virginia Defending Childhood Initiative, commonly referred to as Handle With Care, is tailored to reflect the needs and issues affecting children in West Virginia. The Initiative, a result of a collaborative effort of key stakeholders and partners, builds upon the success of proven programs throughout the country. The goal of the Initiative is to prevent children's exposure to trauma and violence, mitigate negative affects experienced by children's exposure to trauma, and to...

State law recognizes that schools primarily serving expelled students, dropouts and students who had trouble coping in traditional schools should be held accountable for academic performance – but by different measurements. This month, the California State Board of Education began a more than year-long process to determine what those metrics should be, which schools should be measured by them and how the schools should fit into the larger system of accountability and school improvement the...

UPDATED NOTE: For Outside Agencies and Districts – Thank you for your interest, we are happy to have you, please complete the form (Attached) below and email to Nicole LoBese ( nicole.lobese@sanjuan.edu ). by 5pm on JUNE 2, 2017. Brief summary of the day – Keynotes focus on ACEs study, physiology and neurology of the brain and impact of trauma on behavior. Participants would gain basic understanding of the brain science of reactivity and stress, how staff can prevent and intervene with...

As you walk through the courtyard of the Sonoma (California) Charter School (SCS) sounds of stomping feet, clapping hands, and children’s voices singing “round and round” and “shake shake” pour from the performing arts space called the Playbox. Inside, 10 first-graders wearing silk tunics, holding brightly colored fabric pieces , wriggle on the floor like worms, jumping like kangaroos, then gently throw feathers from an imaginary bird in the air. You’ve stepped into the world of...

For 72 years, Hanna Boys Center has been a place of refuge for disadvantaged boys – boys who, largely by circumstance, were in trouble. Dysfunctional homes, neighborhood violence, feral upbringings, drug abuse: Hanna Boys Center has sheltered all kinds. Over those decades Hanna Boys Center has established itself as a leader in transformational protocols, a vanguard on the fractious front advocating for at-risk youth. ..... ..... Trauma-informed care argues that children who’ve experienced...

Parents, teachers and students streamed into the library of Palo Alto’s Gunn High School on a warm evening this spring to hear about a new plan , coming this fall, to help high school students develop empathy and coping skills through “social and emotional learning.” For starters, the audience wanted the answer to a question that has dogged the jargon phrase for years: What is social and emotional learning and why should schools get involved in it? The term is bedeviled by abstractions, but...

In 2013, for the first time, a majority of public-school students in this country—51 percent, to be precise—fell below the federal government’s low-income cutoff, meaning they were eligible for a free or subsidized school lunch. It was a powerful symbolic moment—an inescapable reminder that the challenge of teaching low-income children has become the central issue in American education. The truth, as many American teachers know firsthand, is that low-income children can be harder to educate...

Every novelist, psychologist, anthropologist and your Aunt Jane have wanted to know this. What motivates people and what’s going on when their behavior is irritating or just plain doesn’t make sense? At Echo, we encourage adults to look beneath the behavior of children and to understand ‘behavior as communication.’ It may be that the child is choosing a way of communicating that is hard for you to deal with but that doesn’t diminish the fact that the behavior is driven by some deep need or...

The psychological effects of being bullied don't necessarily stop when the bullying does. That's the conclusion of a newly released study published in the journal Pediatrics. "Students who expressed more frequent peer victimization in fifth grade were more likely to have greater symptoms of depression in seventh grade, and a greater likelihood of using alcohol, marijuana, or tobacco in 10th grade," reports University of Delaware psychologist Valerie Earnshaw , the study's lead author. She...

Some kids just need a break. And they get two in Britt Sexton’s art classes at Beach High School. “I have an alarm that goes off twice a period,” Sexton said. “This Beyonce song comes on. And the kids stop what they’re doing.” Then she and the students do squats. Twenty of them. “It gives them a chance to get up,” Sexton said. “Some of them will dance while they’re squatting.” It’s her way of implementing one of the principles of a pilot program at the Long Beach Unified School District...