Tagged With "Cherokee Point Elementary"
Reply
Re: Looking for Suggestions on Policy
Hi Katie, Educational policy, as you well know, is a tricky beast. I would suggest starting with broad, non-mandated policy that may exist within the district. This could be anything from communication policy to policy/practices on how meetings are conducted. When we examine current literature in Trauma Informed anything, the stall point is often at policy, because we get stuck trying to quantify and operationalize a fundamental shift in paradigm and thinking about ourselves and others. That...
Comment
Re: ACE'ing Your Parent-Student-Teacher Conference
This surprises me a little bit because it is so barrier/problem focused. We take a quite different approach in connecting with the family and identifying strengths and supports first. Parents and caregivers can easily get caught in our view point of "what is wrong/missing/challenging" if we don't first really focus on the gifts the child brings, what we see as their strengths and help the family identify their strengths. Parents send a piece of their heart out into the world and when other...
Comment
Re: ACE'ing Your Parent-Student-Teacher Conference
All great points. I absolutely agree with a strengths-based approach. I believing understanding the challenges help get us there; know better how to flip the script as I call it. Identify strengths and passions help navigate the barriers. Thank you!!
Comment
Re: Federal Grants for Trauma-Informed Interventions in Schools
Hi Martha, Grants will be made mainly to state educational agencies, so your best bet is to engage your state's mental health program. The Request for Grant Proposals (RFP) will need to be made in partnership with your state's educational agencies. The sooner you can start the process of engaging partnerships with other organizations and with your state's mental health agency, the better; the RFP's will be available in Spring and agencies won't have a lot of time to respond at that point.
Comment
Re: Federal Grants for Trauma-Informed Interventions in Schools
Hi Kerrie, It's great that your program has chosen ACEs as your theme this year! I'll try and answer your questions the best to my knowledge (and that of my policy class professor Dr. Angelique Day, who actually helped craft the Trauma-Informed Care portion of H.R.6.) Grants will be made mainly to state educational agencies, so your best bet is to engage your state's mental health program. The Request for Grant Proposals (RFP) will need to be made in partnership with your state's educational...
Reply
Re: schools/classrooms using trauma-informed practices?
Rod: I'm doing a series of stories about trauma-informed schools. Here's the overview: http://acestoohigh.com/2013/03/20/secret-to-fixing-school-discipline/ Here's a story about the work being done by the Washington State Area Health Education Center in Spokane: http://acestoohigh.com/2013/08/20/spokaneschools/ Cherokee Point Elementary in San Diego started out with restorative practices and is now moving to a trauma-informed approach:...
Reply
Re: schools/classrooms using trauma-informed practices?
Krys, I am researching childhood trauma and educator/District implications as part of Continuing Ed / PGP in SDP. I will be presenting (and hopefully motivating) to other staff at my K-8 school. I am working on a Power Point that I would love for you to review if you have time. I'd also love to see any presentation materials you have already put together ? Daun Kauffman daunkauffman@gmail.com
Reply
Re: schools/classrooms using trauma-informed practices?
Greetings - I am grateful to Jane for sharing this information. I will share a little bit here about what my original intent was in creating the course (Creating Compassionate Schools), how it was designed, and "what's next" or pending in terms of professional development. First, as we all know, we are all taking a "it takes a village" approach. This applies to all professional fields, not only to traditionally defined K-12 education. That said, it was about 5 years ago that I learned about...
Comment
Re: Failing Schools or Failing Paradigm ?
Greetings All - I am jumping in as I have what may be a somewhat unique perspective on the topic of funding (or fueling) the work we are generally engaged in from within various roles. As a central office admin for 10 years I knew that content literacy (ie, reading, math, science, etc) was important. From a resiliency and asset management perspective, I also knew that learners impacted by trauma/neglect/ACE's were at a distinct disadvantage with peers who did not contend with such adversity.
Comment
Re: Oregon State educators visit Cherokee Point Elementary in San Diego
What an impressive job you all have done here, Dana. It's of enormous importance. Perhaps Jane Stevens has some idea about how to get this to every School Board in the state.
Comment
Re: Oregon State educators visit Cherokee Point Elementary in San Diego
Thank you Dr. Felitti. Your graciousness is tremendously appreciated. Your groundbreaking research is breaking through endemically diseased roots in our society and the transformation of the children, youth and families is bringing hope and healing to our communities.
Comment
Re: Oregon State educators visit Cherokee Point Elementary in San Diego
Hurrah Cherokee Point, Godwin Higa and Dana Brown! How wonderful to share your program design and successes! Every school in America needs this. Can't wait to meet you this week Dana...and learn more about all you're doing!
Comment
Re: Oregon State educators visit Cherokee Point Elementary in San Diego
Thank you Julie! Excitedly, please know I look forward to meeting you and your ATN team this week. What an exhilarating juncture we are all at with influencing trauma informed systems change with policy and decision makers. Thank you Julie for everything you and your team does for so many parents and their children.
Comment
Re: Cherokee Point Youth Leaders learn about Child Abuse Prevention month
Thanks for sharing your experience with children being willing and capable of speaking meaningfully and openly in a supportive setting. It's an important realization.
Comment
Re: Educational Trauma
Great point often children are shown the hand of avoidance rather than the hand of compassion. Have you read up on this concept of sanctuary trauma?
Reply
Re: How are schools incorporating trauma informed practices, if they are at all?
That was our numbers as well. I think you will continue to struggle and see turn over if it is something left up to certain school staff to "deliver" the trauma-informed practices. To me, a trauma-informed school is one that practices the approach in all of their interactions using "universal precautions." How long has it been since the school has implemented the practices...and what exactly are the practices? I'm curious as to what certain counselors, social workers do. I can tell you what...
Reply
Re: How are schools incorporating trauma informed practices, if they are at all?
Lee ~ You hit on a key point. No one should be surprised that we don't "punish" the students. We use a restorative justice model to teach students how their actions/behaviors impact the community as a whole. It's time intensive, but it has helped prevent suspensions and expulsions, which has helped create stability in the lives of our students. While I'd like to believe that everyone was on board with the restorative justice model, I know that for some of the staff who had been in the school...
Reply
Re: How are schools incorporating trauma informed practices, if they are at all?
Hi Dominic, I am happy to share our intake survey. I am attaching two documents. The word document is the one that we have all students fill out. We also have the Risk Assessment Survey questions as a separate document (PDF) in case a student does not feel comfortable answering the questions with their name on document. We have recently converted this document to a "google form" so that students can fill it out electronically. All of our students are assigned a chromebook during orientation.
Reply
Re: How are schools incorporating trauma informed practices, if they are at all?
This is a fascinating discussion! Here are some stories I did about trauma-informed schools in Spokane and San Francisco that might provide more information about school-wide approaches. These stories are part of a series about schools that are taking a compassionate approach to school discipline. Later this year, I'll do a story about what a school and district need to have the most success, in terms of reductions in referrals, suspensions, expulsions, absenteeism, and an increase in...
Reply
Re: Has anyone surveyed teacher attitudes about trauma-informed care as a way to collect some baseline data?
Does your survey consider teacher self-care from the trauma experienced via workplace bullying in education? Does your district have a workplace bullying policy? A year ago, the AFT and Badass Teachers Association conducted an unscientific, national survey ("Quality of Work life Survey") which indicated teachers were deeply stressed... That survey lef to an amendment in ESSA (co-authored by Senators Booker and Baker) so that school district communities can apply for Title II funding in order...
Blog Post
Trauma education and mindfulness help youth living amid gun violence
Armon Hurst, 2nd from left, first row, Teens on Target, courtesy of YouthAlive! Eighteen-year-old Armon Hurst serves as vice president of the student body at Castlemont High School in Oakland, Calif. He has a 4.0 grade point average, is an avid baseball player, and is slated to go to college next year. But until a few years ago, Hurst would find himself waking from nightmares in the middle of the night. It was difficult to concentrate at school, and he wasn’t eating well. Armon Hurst “There...
Blog Post
Trauma Informed Care -- Workforce training framework
A colleague of mine -- here in New Zealand!! -- recently passed the attached PDF, from Scotland, onto me. It concerns a relatively recent, and still developing, proposed trauma training framework. This might be helpful to others wishing to go further in introducing TIC in their own services. It includes a consideration of ACEs. Naturally, it needs to incorporate culture-specific additions or modifications to suit your local conditions. The document as it is likely has broad application.
Blog Post
Trauma informed education in juvenile justice settings
Jane Stevens contacted me about posting our presentation delivered at the correctional educators conference this last spring. We have been delivering online professional development to all of the educators in the Ohio Juvenile Justice setting in order...
Blog Post
Trauma-informed groups rev up to address race, inclusion
Eighteen-year-old Kia Hanson has always enjoyed her time as a youth leader at the East Oakland Youth Development Center (EOYDC). She’s worked mostly with five- and six-year-olds since she began in 2016. Recently, she tapped into new skills, especially if the kids were having a meltdown. Kia Hanson “If they’re off, we ask them, ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘Do you want to talk about anything?’,” she explains. “Basically asking before assuming they’re mad at the world for no reason.” What made the...
Blog Post
Trauma-informed program in San Diego teaches parents to train other parents
It took two years of weekly meetings between parents and organizers, but now 12 parent leaders at Cherokee Point Elementary School in City Heights, a mostly low-income urban neighborhood with 91,000 residents in San Diego, are teaching people about...
Blog Post
Trauma Informed Schools Webinar Archive
Did you see the September 22 webinar the National Child Traumatic Stress Network hosted? If you missed it look for it here: http://learn.nctsn.org/ The handouts are also attached. Policy Issues in Implementing Trauma-Informed Schools In this webinar experts will explore policy challenges and lessons learned in promoting and supporting trauma-informed schools. Speakers will share key NCTSN resources related to the development and implementation of trauma-informed schools; discuss the...
Blog Post
Trauma-Informed Support for Children - A Follow Up to "What Lies Beneath Behavior?"
You’ve worked through the questions in our infographic “ What Lies Beneath Behavior? ” and instead of judging or punishing you’ve figured out the child is just trying to do the best they can to communicate whatever pain or distress lives inside of them… “So now what do I do?” you ask. As promised, we have produced a second infographic to provide you with a step-by-step guide to a trauma-informed response. The bad news is that there is no manualized program, no one-size fits all solution, no...
Blog Post
Trauma-sensitive education summit for Kansas City schools
From Beth Sarver at Truman Medical Center's Resilience Incubator for a summit June 8-12, 2015: TMC’s Resilience Incubator invites Schools from all over the KC Metro area to attend their Inaugural Resilient Schools Facilitator Summit....
Blog Post
Two studies point to the power of teacher-student relationships to boost learning (Hechinger Report)
" Published in the June 2018 issue of the Economics of Education Review, the researchers found that this increased student-teacher familiarity led to higher test scores, albeit a small increase, after controlling for students’ prior academic achievement and teacher differences. The benefits of getting the same teacher twice in a row were largest for minority students. And when a large share of classmates had the same teacher as before, even kids who were new to the class posted higher than...
Blog Post
U.S. Department of Education begins investigation into discrimination against Native students in Montana’s Wolf Point School District (newsmaven.io)
After years of documented instances of anti-Native racism — including the use of racial slurs and harmful stereotypes by white administrators, faculty, and staff — in a school where 94 percent of Native students are below proficiency in reading, compared to 49 percent of white students, the U.S. Department of Education is starting an investigation into discrimination against Native students in Montana’s Wolf Point School District. Investigators with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office...
Blog Post
Umatilla (OR) School District launches ACEs campaign [EastOregonian.com]
Did an adult in your house often push, grab, slap or throw something at you? Did you often feel that you had no one to protect you? Did you often feel that no one in your family loved you or thought you were special? Answering yes to any of those questions adds a point to the Adverse Childhood Experience — ACE — score, and making sure children can overcome those experiences to become healthy adults is the backbone of a new initiative for the Umatilla School District. The Umatilla School...
Blog Post
Understanding Trauma's Impact on Learning: A pathway to creating a school culture where every child living through adversity can grow alongside peers [my.aasa.org]
Susan Cole, director of the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative at Harvard Law School and Massachusetts Advocates for Children, believes the most effective school settings weave trauma sensitivity into other affairs of the school day. The principal of a small elementary school in central Massachusetts was approached by his staff with a request. They asked about their school becoming more responsive to trauma owing to the number of children in their classrooms who seemed to be facing...
Blog Post
Unintended Consequences
This article -- The Education Practice That is Costing Taxpayers Billions of Dollars -- is about what may happen to students who are suspended from school. While not everything bad happens to all students who are suspended, there are enough of them to have a societal impact. The problem is that the societal impact is far enough into the future that it becomes disconnected from the event that might cause it. Or maybe there are a lot of events that might lead to the result, but we aren't aware...
Blog Post
Using Meditation to Help Close the Achievement Gap [Well.Blogs.NYTimes.com]
Closing the so-called achievement gap between poor inner-city children and their more affluent suburban counterparts is among the biggest challenges for education reformers. The success of some schools’ efforts suggests that meditation might significantly improve children’s school performance – and help close that gap. In 2007, James Dierke, then the principal of the Visitacion Valley Middle School in a troubled neighborhood in San Francisco, was determined to improve both the quality of...
Blog Post
Values for a Trauma-Informed Care Culture in Your Classroom and School
Five core values for establishing a trauma-informed culture in your classroom and/or school. An emphasis on these values lead to a relationship-based culture.
Blog Post
Video series shows how San Diego Unified is creating trauma-informed schools
"We're committed to lifting up the work around healing, belonging and inclusion," said Joey Bravo, program associate at The California Endowment (TCE). Joey and his colleagues with TCE's Center for Healthy Communities supported the creation of a series of videos that capture the groundbreaking efforts of the San Diego Unified School District's campaign to create trauma-informed schools. In this series of videos, SDUSD's transformation of their discipline policies...
Blog Post
Vulnerable youth stress the importance of influential adults in their school lives [buffalo.edu]
BUFFALO, N.Y. – Kids who faced daunting barriers to success in the classroom had a clear message for University at Buffalo researchers who asked them as young adults to look back on their experiences with maltreatment, homelessness and their time in school: Adults can do better. “It’s as though they’re asking us as adults not to give up on them, to stick with them,” says Annette Semanchin Jones, an assistant professor in UB’s School of Social Work (SSW) and lead author of the paper with...
Blog Post
Washington, DC, City Council Education Committee probes how trauma-informed schools can help students
Two-and-a-half years ago, a school administrator confronted District of Columbia Councilmember David Grosso with a stark and surprising reality when he visited the Walker-Jones Education Campus to learn about a literacy intervention program. At the...
Blog Post
We Need the WHOLE to Create Trauma-Informed Systems
Sometimes I think I have PTSD from failed change efforts. I am not kidding. I have developed symptoms from living through nearly twenty years of failed education reform efforts. When I reflect on the many change efforts I participated in, I shudder. I try to block it out. I avoid discussing it. There is an "activating" body memory (SE™ talk) for me that is associated with prescriptive change efforts. When I encounter a stimulus or trigger, like someone talking about a new protocol intended...
Blog Post
Wellness approach supports students (smartbrief.com)
The role teachers play in child development is a vital one, but playing it can be emotionally draining, asserts Alex Shevrin, a teacher at Center Point School in Winooski, Vt. When [a student] calls me a b****, my first question is, Hey, are you okay? she said in a recent Education Talk Radio interview , explaining that a child acting out is facing larger problems. If you have an opportunity to break the script and say something they're not expecting, it gets you a little closer in building...
Blog Post
Wellness approach supports students [SmartBrief.com]
No pressure, teachers, but as an academic instructor, you’ve not only taken on students’ learning development, but also their social and emotional development. The role teachers play in child development is a vital one, but playing it can be emotionally draining, asserts Alex Shevrin, a teacher at Center Point School in Winooski, Vt. Shevrin was recently recognized as one of SmartBrief’s Editor’s Choice Content Award winners for her blog post, “ A mindset shift to continue supporting the...
Blog Post
What Children’s Brains Tell Us About Trauma: Invest Early [ChronicleofSocialChange.org]
This article, written by Wendy Smith, addresses the challenges created by trauma, and why it's important to address these issues as early as possible. While the article focuses more on the role of social workers, parents, and foster care systems, this same information applies to anyone who works with children, regardless of where we have the opportunity to provide support. ~ Leisa Irwin, ACEs in Education group manager. What Children’s Brains Tell Us About Trauma: Invest Early, by Wendy...
Blog Post
What do you think, is a 6th SEL core competency needed?
The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) defines five core SEL competencies , including (1)self-awareness, (2)social awareness, (3)self-management, (4)relationship skills, and (5)responsible decision making. The CASEL Five SEL competencies ARE NOT sufficient to achieve that which they were created to accomplish and which CASEL itself was created to accomplish. There are 6 core competencies, not five, and the 6th is the one that is by far the most important.
Blog Post
What it’s Like to Teach at One of America’s Least Racially Integrated Schools [theatlantic.com]
On a late February afternoon, Angela Crawford, an English teacher, stood in front of about three dozen Philadelphia educators—mostly young, black women—as they all swapped stories of small victories and challenges in their classrooms. Dressed in a “Black Lives Matter” T-shirt and slim black slacks, Crawford, at one point, reflected on what has helped her remain resilient while working in some of the nation’s least resourced and most segregated classrooms for 23 years. “Black women are...
Blog Post
What Lies Beneath Behavior? Introducing Echo's New Infographic!
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...
Blog Post
When bad news gets to be too much
By AJ Willingham, CNN Updated 12:56 PM ET, Wed July 20, 2016 (CNN) Maybe it happened after Orlando or San Bernardino or Dallas , or when attacks in France , Brussels , Iraq and other corners of the world came in such quick succession there was no time for one trauma to disperse among the Facebook mourners before the next took over. Maybe it was way earlier, after Sandy Hook or Charleston . Whenever it was, at some point, our usual post-tragedy routine of sadness and prayer hardened into...
Blog Post
When Grit Isn’t Enough [EWA.org]
The first time I heard a preschooler explaining a classmate’s disruptive behavior, I was surprised at how adult her four-year-old voice sounded. Her classmate “doesn’t know how to sit still and listen,” she said to me, while I sat at the snack table with them. He couldn’t learn because he couldn’t follow directions, she explained, as if she had recently completed a behavioral assessment on him. Months before either of these children would start...
Blog Post
White House convenes federal, state, and local leaders to address trauma-informed approaches in schools
With just four months remaining in the Obama presidency, the White House assembled leaders from 14 states and the District of Columbia and key administration officials for a day-long conference, “ Trauma Informed Approaches in Schools: Supporting Girls of Color and Rethinking Discipline.” Last summer’s White House meeting, titled “Rethink School Discipline,” covered issues related to the CDC-Kaiser Permanente ACE Study and trauma, but transforming schools through trauma-informed approaches...
Blog Post
Why Adults Should Listen, Learn, Trust, and Expect More From Kids (kqed.org)
When Adora Svitak was twelve-years-old she spoke on the TED stage, saying she hates the world "childish" if it's being used to describe irrational demands or irresponsible behavior. She said she sees enough of that in the adult world to know it's not the exclusive domain of children. In fact, she made the point that adults could learn a thing or two if they'd only open their minds to the possibility that kids have a lot to offer the world. "We kids still dream about perfection and that's a...
Blog Post
Why and How Teachers Can Become Better Prepared for Trauma in Schools
Below is the text of an article appearing in Forest of the Rain Productions with a special thanks to Dr. Michael Robinson. Link to piece is: https://forestoftheraineducation.weebly.com/we-donrsquot-teach-educators-enough-about-trauma-we-should-do-more-karen-gross.html TEXT: Hardly a week goes by without some trauma in the US. Some events are nature made; some are human-made. There appear to be fewer and fewer “safe” places and spaces. The usually “safe” places – schools, universities,...