Blog

By Asher Lehrer-Small, Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images, The74, September 19, 2022 An increasing share of states are including student perspectives in education policymaking, a new report finds, but making sure those voices are diverse and have real power can remain a challenge. At least 33 now include formal positions for youth representatives on their state boards of education or as advisors to their state boards or their state superintendent’s office. That’s up from just 25 four...

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...

Passed on August 22, 2022, CA Assembly Bill1703 , reflects the following; This bill would establish the California Indian Education Act and encourage school districts, county offices of education, and charter schools to form California Indian Education Task Forces with California tribes local to their regions or tribes historically located in the region. To the extent that this bill imposes new duties on the county office of education, or consortium of county offices of education, that...

By Cara Buckley, Photograph: Janie Osborne for The New York Times, The New York Times, September 15, 2022 Public schools are increasingly using savings from solar energy to upgrade facilities, help their communities, and give teachers raises — often with no cost to taxpayers. One school district was able to give pay raises to its teachers as big as 30 percent. Another bought new heating and ventilation systems, all the better to help students and educators breathe easier in these times. The...

PACEs Connection's own Lara Kain will be speaking during this webinar focused on trauma informed strategies in schools. Join 4CA and the following panel of leaders in this discussion about policy perspectives on implementing trauma informed strategies in schools, including an update on California’s 4.1 billion dollar investment in Community Schools. Janis Connallon, Senior Health Policy Associate, Children’s Defense Fund-CA Elena Costa, Program Coordinator, Essentials for Childhood...

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,...

PACEs Connection's interactive sessions focus on trauma-informed education and the impact of policy and system changes. This course will be facilitated by Lara Kain, PACEs Connection's educational consultant, and will be a combination of lecture, discussion, and collaboration. This session will use the RYSE center Interacting Layers of Trauma and Healing as a framework. Policy and Systems, Trauma-Informed Education and your Community PACEs Initiative Outline the importance of including...

By Joel Warsh , Photo: Washington Post staff illustration/Getty Images/iStockphoto, The Washington Post , September 7, 2022 Joel Warsh is a pediatrician in Los Angeles specializing in integrative medicine. What decade are we in? A school district in southwestern Missouri has decided to bring back corporal punishment — otherwise known as spanking, in this case with paddles — as a way to discipline students. Parents in Cassville, Mo., learned recently that spanking would once again be allowed...

Announcing upcoming courses for educators! Kick of your school year with Trauma-Informed Education or Supporting Marginalized Students!

This past week, I cried at school. I cried because no child, at the ages of four to five years old, should have experienced the kind of pain that makes them lash out for reasons unknown to me. What could have possibly happened in their short lives that causes them to destroy everything in their path? To become so upset that they aren't able to be consoled or helped to calm down? I cried for the the student who has had unspeakable things done to them by someone who should be keeping them...

The four-month Trauma-Informed Learning Community Series launched in San Diego, California, with Session #1 on May 20th, with seventy-five cross-sector service providers, agencies, and schools who work with teens, transitional-age youth, and families. Hosted by Diego Hills Central, Area Superintendent Lindsay Reese’s steadfast leadership supported the series through providing staff, food, color copies of materials, and the Street Team who are Learn4Life students from several schools in San...

By Adrian Horton, Photo: Argot Pictures, The Guardian, August 15, 2022 T here’s a moment early in Let the Little Light Shine, a riveting documentary on one community’s fight to preserve their grade school, when it becomes clear that Chicago’s National Teachers Academy is no ordinary place. It’s a school assembly, and the students – overwhelmingly Black and brown children from the city’s South Side, kindergarten through eighth grade – pack benches in the cafeteria. Two of the older students...