Blog

The Connections Matter Academy is a set of engaging videos designed to educate young people about trauma and how it impacts their life. We created it to inspire teens to begin their healing process, break the cycle of intergenerational trauma, and reach their highest potential through healthy connections with others. What exactly is The Connections Matter Academy? An educational, inclusive, and entertaining animated series to help teens and young adults cope with trauma Co-created by Beth...

Note: PACEs Connection is in dire financial straits. We are asking for support, from you, our 57,505 members, to help cover the loss of foundation funding that was promised and did not come through. Pay and hours have been cut for our staff—most of us will be laid off for the month of December. Another grant will pick up in January. Since sounding the alarm this summer, we’ve raised about $24,000 . To get a sense of who your fellow members are, who is donating and why, please enjoy and share...

Jack Morgan/Lanier High School's Día de Muertos altar Author: To read Jack Morgan's article, please click here. People throughout South Texas are celebrating Día de los Muertos by building colorful altars and decorating them with photos of their lost loved ones, flowers and their favorite foods. The citywide celebration Muertosfest has included a monument specifically honoring the children and teachers lost to the Uvalde school shooting Muertosfest’s Chris Davila said 80 altars were set up...

The Trauma-informed Design Society is pleased to announce the new TiDEvalK12 tool ! This tool is the first of its kind--an evidence-based tool to facilitate interior design renovations and new builds of K-12 schools! It can be used to evaluate the physical space and identify changes that can lower the stress levels of students and staff. The tool is grounded in the Substance and Mental Health Services Administrations' guidance for a trauma-informed approach, the Trauma-informed Design (TiD)...

Image: Courtesy of Deanna Hooker Author: To read Jacalyn Wetzel's article, please click here. Most 11-year-old boys are goofing off with their friends, staying up way too late yelling into gaming headsets or harassing their younger siblings, but not Jayden Hooker of North Carolina. Jayden has been spending his spare time finding a way to raise money to help end period poverty in his school district after an eye-opening experience with one of his classmates. The sixth grader explained that he...

Event Title: Interrupting the School to Prison Pipeline Using a Trauma Informed Lens Event Date: Wednesday, October 19th, 2022 Event Time: 10:00 am - 12:00 pm PST Event Facilitators: Porter Jennings-McGarity & Lara Kain Special Guest: Tia Martinez Join PACEs Connection’s trauma-informed education consultant (Lara Kain) and trauma-informed criminal justice consultant (Dr. Porter Jennings-McGarity) and special guest Tia Martinez for our first ever interdisciplinary collaborative event...

NOT TOO LATE FOR COHORT 1!! Also registering for COHORT 2!! New!! 48-HOUR HISTORICAL TRAUMA SPECIALIST CERTIFICATION in collaboration with THE INTERNATIONAL HISTORICAL TRAUMA ASSOCIATION We are the only entity offering a comprehensive, 48-hour Historical Trauma Specialist Certification Program. The Program is broken into 6 levels and is built on a foundation of BIPOC cultures and neurobiology. It is taught from a multicultural perspective, injecting traditions and ideology from various...

The Trauma-informed Design Society is pleased to announce the new TiDEvalK12 tool ! This tool is the first of its kind--an evidence-based tool to facilitate interior design renovations and new builds of K-12 schools! It can be used to evaluate the physical space and identify changes that can lower the stress levels of students and staff. The tool is grounded in the Substance and Mental Health Services Administrations' guidance for a trauma-informed approach, the Trauma-informed Design (TiD)...

School-Based Suicide Postvention from a Liberated Lens: A Community of Practice Starting October 20th School-Based Suicide Postvention from a Liberated Lens: A Community of Practice A collaborative and conversational space to build the field’s capacity to hold ourselves and each other after death by suicide in our school communities with equity and liberation at the forefront. October 20, 2022, January 19, 2023, March 2, 2023, and May 4, 2023 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. PT / 1:00 p.m. - 3:00...

By Brandon Tensley, Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images, CNN US, October 2, 2022 In the early 2000s, when I was a student at Ridge View High School, in Columbia, South Carolina, I loved to parse the legacies of certain historical figures: W.E.B. Du Bois, in AP US History; Malcolm X, in AP English Language and Composition. At the same time, I wanted more. Too often, Advanced Placement curricula seemed to give attention to just a handful of Black heavyweights and, as a result, neglect the...

The Bridging to Resilience conference is about coming together with educators, social workers, health care professionals, religious communities, and other helping professionals to share conversations, ideas, strategies, tools, and connections to help build resilience and heal trauma in our own communities. We believe that by building a collaborative and resilient community to both heal trauma and solve poverty in our classrooms and neighborhoods, we have the ability to change lives and...

Please join us for our series Education Upended: Talking Out of Turn. This series features a conversation facilitated by Lara Kain, PACEsConnection education consultant, with special guests on education-related current events and hot topics. We will use a trauma-informed and PACEs science-aware lens to examine what's going on K-12 education, what needs changing, and strategies being used in the field to disrupt harmful policies and make positive changes in the system. October session,...