Tagged With "Bringing Love Into Our Schools"
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A South LA high school steps up effort to help students besieged by trauma [centerforhealthjournalism.org]
Along with books and backpacks, the teens who walk through the hallways of Washington Preparatory High School in South Los Angeles also carry secrets and fear. Some have seen moms or dads arrested or taken away by immigration agents during early morning raids. They've watched as loved ones and friends were gunned down or stabbed to death on the sidewalks in front of where they live. Others dread going home to an adult who hurts instead of heals. Trauma, depression and anxiety weigh heavily...
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A Systems Approach to Integrating Health in Education [RWJF.org]
A systems approach is needed to better align the health and education sectors in order to address the needs of the whole child. The Issue Students who are healthy, present, and engaged learn better. At the same time, those with more education tend to live longer, healthier, and more productive lives. In short, the relationship between health and education is reciprocal: higher education has been found to improve health, and better health supports learning. But despite these connections the...
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A Town Helps Transform Its School (edutopia.org)
For years, residents in the small, rural community of Pittsfield, New Hampshire, fretted over the state of Pittsfield Middle High School, their only middle and high school. Ranked the fifth-lowest-performing high school in New Hampshire, the 300-student school struggled with attendance, discipline, and general student disengagement. Problems deepened when the neighboring town of Barnstead stopped sending kids to the school, resulting in a 40 percent drop in enrollment and a funding cut from...
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A Trauma-Informed Approach to Teaching Through Coronavirus - for Students Everywhere, Online or Not [washingtonpost.com]
By Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post, March 26, 2020 “Anxiety” is one of the words you hear frequently about our individual and collective reactions to the coronavirus pandemic — which has stopped public life in its tracks in much of the world. Kids are anxious. So are their parents and teachers and principals and superintendents and friends and elected officials. For those people who were anxious before covid-19, the sense of apprehension has only deepened. Given that, this post offers...
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A Trauma-Informed Approach to Teaching Through Coronavirus [tolerance.org]
Experts from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network share their recommendations for educators supporting students during the COVID-19 crisis. By TEACHING TOLERANCE STAFF MARCH 23, 2020 L ast week, as schools across the nation closed their doors to slow the spread of the coronavirus, TT reached out to our community to learn what support you needed at this time. Among the most common responses was a call for trauma-informed practices to support students over the coming weeks and months.
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A Trauma Intervention Program Designed for Use in Schools
A school-based trauma intervention in two Rhode Island schools reduced trauma symptoms by 35%, on average, in a school population where 91% of students showed elevated levels of trauma.
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A Traumatic Failure: DC public schools neglect mental health [centerforhealthjournalism.org]
This series was produced as part of the University of Southern California Center for Health Journalism Fellowship with a grant from the Fund for Journalism on Child Well-Being. Other stories in this series include: The Cost of Juvenile Trauma HillRag Wednesday, January 9, 2019 “I have to meet this guy and have sex with him. If I don’t, then he and his friends are going to rape my little sister,” a student at Frank Ballou High School in Ward 8’s Congress Heights told her teacher. The teacher...
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A Week in the Life of a School Social Worker [psychotherapynetworker.org]
Public School 48, where I’m on staff as a social worker, sits on a block between a juvenile detention center and a strip club. The school serves around 900 mostly Hispanic and African American children in prekindergarten through fifth grade, with a large percentage of those kids living in shelter apartments. Of course, PS 48 has an educational mission, not a clinical one, but I’m part of a service staff that includes speech, occupational, and physical therapists. I’ve been a school social...
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A "When the Nickel Dropped" Story - Sometimes It's Something So Small
My daughter, Candace, taught 5th then 3rd grade at an inner city Baltimore elementary school through Teach For America. It was trial by fire her first year, as this was a struggling school and many students had a trauma history. It is Teach For America’s mission to place teachers in the most needy schools. Candace was very enthusiastic, but didn’t know much about trauma and its effects, other than what she intuitively felt - which was impressively a lot. So it was very timely that I was...
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AB-2691 Pupil health: pupil and school staff trauma: Trauma-Informed Schools Initiative
Being a proponent of trauma-informed care and incorporating ACEs science, I was so excited to learn today that there is an assembly bill in California (AB-2691) addressing both of these! "This bill would establish within the State Department of Education the Trauma-Informed Schools Initiative to address the impact of adverse childhood experiences on the educational outcomes of California pupils. The bill would require the department to take specified actions, on or before December 31, 2019,...
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Access Denied: The Fight for Public Education [revealnews.org]
The idea behind public education is simple: A community pays into a system that aims to create a bright future for the next generation. Years pass, and those kids grow up. They pay into the same system, yielding the same dividends. Repeat. But things aren’t always that simple. As this week’s episode explains, the policies that shape public education can be subject to influences – ideological and financial. We begin with a profile of President Donald Trump’s Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos.
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ACE-Aha Moments & Parenting: Meet Aprel Phelps Downey
Aprel Phelps Downey What was your ACEs Aha moment? When did you first hear about ACEs and what impact did/does it have on you? How do ACEs impact you as a parent? How is your parenting impacted by past trauma? What’s been most helpful to you as a parent parenting with ACEs? What’s been most challenging for you as a parent parenting with ACEs? What has parenting taught you? What have you learned? How do you manage complex family relationships? What inspires/encourages and helps you? I know...
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ACE'ing Your Parent-Student-Teacher Conference
Sharing a resource to support school/educator efforts. https://mytraumainformedschool.com/aceing-your-parent-student-teacher-conference/
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ACE Surveillance Study of Teachers and Administrators in Public and Private Schools in Southwest Nigeria, West Africa
Note: These findings were presented at the Child Trauma Conference in Lagos on October 25-26, 2019. Rationale: Many children today live with layers of stress both subtle and overt which in this report are collectively referred to as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Specifically, these ACEs are physical, emotional and sexual abuse; physical and emotional neglect; household dysfunction and domestic violence as well as community violence. The children have a life marked by chaos,...
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ACEs & African Americans Community on ACEs Connection
ACEs Connection envisions a resilient world where ALL people thrive. We are an anti-racist organization committed to the pursuit of social justice. In our work to promote resilience and prevent and mitigate ACEs, we intentionally embrace and uplift people who have historically not had a seat at the table. ACEs Connection celebrates the voices and tells the stories of people who have been barred from decision-making and who have shouldered the burden of systemic and economic oppression as the...
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ACEs and trauma-informed teaching in the Netherlands
Over the past twenty years several studies have shown that ACEs are common and that there is a strong relationship of these experiences with various health factors. Although these studies have all been very important in helping to establish the frequency of adverse childhood experiences, very little has actually been asked of children themselves. In addition, never before has a direct link been made with what a large, representative group of children (N = 664) say they have experienced in...
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ACEs awareness and Compassionate Education Systems - good news from the community
Carla Denner shared an experience with us from the Petaluma City School Board Meeting in March. The topic of discussion was schools being a safe place for all students and those facing immigration issues. She shared with us that she was happy to hear ACES discussed as part of this conversation. Also the wonderful work that Nikki (ACEs fellow) is doing with the Petaluma Schools. Petaluma is an example of a compassionate education system that is working to educate their staff about ACES and...
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ACEs Champion Julie Kurtz Gives Every Child (and Adult) a Voice
Julie Kurtz hasn’t stopped creating ways to build and promote resilience in herself and others who have experienced trauma since she left her family home for college at age 18. Although she experienced four types of adversity during her childhood, the CEO of the Center for Optimal Brain Integration has traveled a complex journey to mitigate those adversities by recognizing her own internal resilience, building skills to buffer her toxic and traumatic stress, uncovering her voice through...
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ACES: Educators Present on Child Abuse: South Boston Online
Jeannette Fodness, Meg Rieley and I went to Boston to present at the ASCD conference--a large (@ 7000 I believe) conference for educators and administrators. The conversations were diverse and the interest in ACEs varied as did the knowledge level. Fortunately, a reporter from South Boston Online chose our learning lab to attend and here is what he had to say: http://www.southbostononline.com/aces-educators-present-on-child-abuse-2/ P.S. He got our titles a little mixed up, but the ideas are...
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ACEs Group Shows its Hand to School Board [parkrapidsenterprise.com]
By Robin D. Fish, Park Rapids Enterprise, August 10, 2019 The Park Rapids Area School Board on Monday heard a presentation by the community’s ACEs Committee about the school’s central role in the drive to make Park Rapids a trauma-informed community. Speaking for ACES MN, a local group started under the auspices of ACTION Park Rapids to address adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), five presenters reviewed the area’s first ACEs Summit, held Feb. 13 at the high school. Lisa Coborn,...
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ACEs Science Champions Series: Eulanda Thorne Applies ACEs Science Awareness at School and at Home
Eulanda Thorne and her children (L to R) Sarah, Joshua, Leah, Emmanuel When school counselor Eulanda Thorne discovered the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in 2018, she felt as if she were on fire. “I felt that I had missed a vital part of my education. Anyone who is in college for social work or teaching, a class on ACEs and trauma should be a required course.” Without an understanding of ACEs, she says, “I would think the students who are sent to me are being defiant or...
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ACEs Science in Education: The Next Big Challenge is Systems Change #ACEsCon2018
One of the first sessions of the 2018 ACEs Conference: Action to Access discussed the barriers and opportunities for increasing access in the field of education. The main question was: "How can one achieve systematic changes within the field of education?" The session was moderated by Michelle Flowers, a passionate advocate, and the principal of Kinney High in Rancho Cordova, CA, which is part of the Folsom Cordova Unified School District. It included a dynamic and diverse panel of education...
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ACEs/toxic stress color wheel for schools!
If you've seen the documentary Paper Tigers , you may remember the stress target -- or color wheel -- in Lincoln High School Principal Jim Sporleder's office. Now you can have one, too! The steering group members of the Yolo Resilience Network in Yolo County, CA, (you can find them on the Yolo County ACEs Connection group) realized the needed to have some tools that they could give to local educators for whom they did presentations about ACEs and trauma-informed practices. "We'd see people...
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ACEs Validated My Teaching Experience
When I first heard about the CDC-Kaiser Permanente ACE Study , it felt like a light bulb had actually gone on. Finally, FINALLY, someone was validating what I saw every single day teaching in East Oakland. For eight years, I taught at an elementary school in the most violent part of Oakland , the part that the police called the “Killing Zone.” The kids in my class had seen friends, neighbors, and family members shot or stabbed, and routinely hid in bathrooms and closets when gang fights...
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ACEs Webinar: Jim Sporleder on Trauma-informed Schools
To join this webinar, register here . Trauma-informed schools: a conversation with Jim Sporleder, former principal of Lincoln High School, featured in the documentary Paper Tigers Date: Monday, November 19, 2018 Time: 3:00-4:00 pm PDT /6:00-7:00 pm EDT Jim will answer some prepared questions followed by an open question and answer period with participants. Topics that Jim will discuss include: How do you increase staff and community buy in for a trauma-informed school? How do you determine...
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Articles about trauma-informed schools
Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA, tries new approach to school discipline—suspensions drop 85% 2012 http://acestoohigh.com/2012/04...-expulsions-drop-85/ Massachusetts, Washington lead U.S. trauma-sensitive school movement 2012...
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ACLU: COPS AND NO COUNSELORS- How the Lack of School Mental Health Staff Is Harming Students
In the wake of high-profile school shootings, many schools over the past decade have invested scarce educational funds into putting more police in schools. School districts have shown a near obsession with “hardening” schools despite federal data revealing that the real crisis of schools isn’t violence, but a broad failure to hire enough support staff to serve students’ mental health needs. Today’s students are experiencing record levels of depression and anxiety and many forms of trauma.
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Adaptive Schools and Trauma Informed Practices
Author: John Matich, Training Associate and member of the Thinking Collaborative Futures Team .....In a trauma-informed school, the adults in the school community are prepared to recognize and respond to those who have been impacted by traumatic stress (ACEs). In addition, students are provided with clear expectations and communication strategies to guide them through stressful situations. The goal is to not only provide tools to cope with extreme situations but to create an underlying...
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Addressing Adverse Childhood Experiences in School (ascd.org)
Of the roughly 74 million children in the United States, just under 51 million are preK–12 public school students. Every day, 13 million of these children go hungry. A report of child abuse is made every ten seconds . And 2.7 million have a parent in prison. Our children are living in a state of emergency. How can we, as educators, expect them to learn when they are living in a constant state of fight or flight? Even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente...
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Addressing childhood trauma in Laconia schools [laconiadailysun.com]
Over the last few years, the Laconia School District has been actively working to understand what childhood trauma is, how it impacts our students, and what we, as an educational institution can do to mitigate the effects of this. We have also learned about secondary, or vicarious, trauma. This type of trauma is experienced by our staff as a result of supporting our students who are living with ongoing and pervasive trauma. Our teachers and support staff are serving in pseudo social worker...
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Advancing Systemic Changes to Promote Healthy School Environments [RWJF.org]
Purpose RWJF seeks to advance systemic changes that embed health in school environments. To help advance these systemic changes, the Foundation will support a collaborative, multipronged strategy with three complementary areas of work related to Research, Policy, and Strategic Action. This Call for Qualifications (CFQ) represents Phase I of a two-phase selection process designed to identify eligible organizations to lead each area of work, which include: Applied Research and Translation (one...
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Advice for New Principals: Be 'Emotionally Vulnerable With Your Staff' (edweek.org)
In our second installment of advice for new principals, Education Week talked to Melissa Hensley, who just finished her seventh year as principal of Central High School in Woodstock, Va. Hensley was the Virginia state principal of the year in 2016 and a finalist for the 2017 National Principal of the Year, an award given by the National Association of Secondary School Principals. EW: What words of wisdom do you have for a first-year principal? HENSLEY : One thing that really comes to...
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After a hate crime, a town welcomes immigrants into its schools [hechingerreport.org]
This story is part of a series about how schools, teachers and students are coping with the immigration crisis. PATCHOGUE, N.Y. — Wilda Rosario’s support groups for immigrant students at Patchogue-Medford High School usually start out with lots of laughter. That’s just how teenagers are, she says. But it doesn’t take too long for conversations to turn serious with this group of kids, most of them children seeking asylum from violence in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. During an...
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After Fatal School Shootings, Antidepressant Use Surges Among Student Survivors [latimes.com]
By Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times, December 16, 2019 The children who experience a school shooting but live to see their parents and friends again are often called survivors. But by at least one measure of mental health, they too are among a gunman’s victims, new research finds. In the two years after a fatal school shooting, the rate at which antidepressants were prescribed to children and teens rose by 21% within a tight ring around the affected school. The increase in antidepressants...
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After Freshman Commits Suicide, Dean Secretly Gets Students to Tell “13 Reasons Why Not” (faithit.com)
After losing a freshman, Megan Abbott, to suicide four years ago, Oxford High School’s Dean of Students, Pam Fine, came up with the idea for the project. Pam wrote in a Facebook post on May 2nd: “This has been one of the hardest, but most rewarding weeks for me professionally. A small group of students took a big risk. They decided to start a raw and powerful dialogue about suicide. By putting themselves in front of 1,800 classmates and saying…look, I have a story, too. I have pain. I have...
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After long battle, mental health will be part of New York's school curriculum [timesunion.com]
As a health teacher for the Shenendehowa school district, Dustin Verga sees firsthand the pressures today's youth are under. They've grown up in an era of over-testing, jam-packed schedules, high expectations to get into a top college, and dual lives — one in the real world and one online, where the pressure to curate a picture-perfect life and rack up "likes" is ever-present. That's why the introduction of mental health literacy in New York schools this coming fall is such a big deal, Verga...
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After the fire, a school district gone [EdSource.org]
Andrew and Ariya Boone got the call from Paradise Elementary at 9:30 a.m. on Nov. 8. Fire was roaring toward the town of Paradise and they had to come immediately to pick up their three boys. Andrew raced to the school as Ariya frantically packed the family’s most treasured belongings and soothed their small daughter while the sky, which had been relatively clear just an hour before, turned so dark that it felt like “10 o’clock at night at 9:30 in the morning.” “It was insane…the fire was...
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Afterschool Art Program Helps D.C. Youth Exorcise Fears Of Gun Violence[WAMU 88.5]
When U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stepped down last week after seven years on the job, he didn't talk about test scores or teacher quality. Rather, fighting back tears, he used the opportunity to talk about what he called the "greatest frustration" of his tenure — Washington not passing gun control legislation. "If I can leave you one number: 16,000. That in my first six years as Secretary of Education that's the number of young people who are killed across our...
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Afterschool programs and a trauma-informed approach [Afterschool Alliance]
“A trauma-informed, culturally responsive lens must be a part of everything we do.” This statement by Laura Norton-Cruz, Director of the Alaska Resilience Initiative, sums up the key message of last week’s Senate Afterschool Caucus briefing for Congressional staff which focused on “Afterschool Programs and a Trauma-Informed Approach.” On Wednesday, Sept. 11, the Senate Afterschool Caucus* — in partnership with the Afterschool Alliance, Alaska Children’s Trust – Alaska Afterschool Network,...
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AG Kamala D. Harris Seeks to Better Serve Foster Youth (sdvoice.info)
Attorney General Kamala D. Harris Issues New Guidelines to Encourage Secure Sharing of Information Between Schools and Child Welfare Agencies to Better Serve Foster Youth Attorney General Kamala D. Harris today announced that the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Children’s Justice (BCJ), the California Department of Education (CDE), and the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) have jointly developed statewide guidelines for school districts, county offices of...
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Against the Tide
“I don’t know if I can do this anymore, Kris. I am just so discouraged.” I sit with my dear friend on a sticky summer night trying to get my gut right. “Gut wrench” is an apt description. It’s invaded my body and overwhelmed my mind. I can’t think straight, see straight, see a way out. The darkness pervading her porch has met my inner ache and it’s threatening to overwhelm my composure. I am choking back a watershed of tears as I open my mouth to speak. I am trying to conjure the words to...
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Aiming for Discipline Instead of Punishment (edutopia.org)
There are many perspectives on the topic of discipline in our classrooms and schools, and I’d like to explore the idea of using brain-aligned discipline with students who have adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Discipline, unlike punishment, is proactive and begins before there are problems. It means seeing conflict as an opportunity to problem solve. Discipline provides guidance, focuses on prevention, enhances communication, models respect, and embraces natural consequences. It teaches...
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All pupils will be taught about mental and physical wellbeing (gov.uk)
It's a start. Clearly many children do not grow up in households where this information is known and understood and healthy patterns hold. I believe we still have a way to go including ACEs and that emotional health is key. All children in England will be taught how to look after their mental wellbeing and recognise when classmates may be struggling, as the Government unveils new guidance for the introduction of compulsory health education. Bold new plans set out today (Monday 25 February)...
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Almost all students with disabilities are capable of graduating on time. Here’s why they’re not. [hechingerreport.org]
As a teenager, Michael McLaughlin wanted to go to college. He had several disabilities, including dyslexia and bipolar disorder, which threatened to make the road ahead more difficult. He sometimes had trouble paying attention in class and understanding directions. He also had an IQ of 115 — on the upper ranges of what is considered average. With help, he should have been able to graduate alongside his classmates, ready to pursue higher education. But instead of graduating from Bartlett High...
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Alternative Schools Network in Chicago Takes on Youth Trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
Click here to read the full article on the ASN website The Alternative Schools Network (ASN) Youth Resilience Project is an initiative that grew from the collective desire to develop and provide additional clinical resources for ASN Network schools. The Youth Resilience Project is dedicated to the cause of bringing knowledge, awareness, and support to schools around issues associated with youth trauma. Spreading the knowledge of trauma and its impacts on youth development became a mission of...
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‘Ambassadors of Hope’ Trauma-sensitive schools understand the whole child [DerbyInformer.com]
Kindergarten teacher Erica Nunemaker ripped down the clip chart she used for behavior management in her classroom. Children moved their clip up for good behavior and down for bad behavior. Nunemaker realized the same students were moving down every day. The clip was a public display of the student’s failure, and children weren’t learning how to fix their behavior. “I’ve noticed that a lot of times we discipline them and tell them that’s not right ... but then we don’t give them a solution to...
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Amid Latest Suicides With School Shooting Ties, Columbine Families Share Lessons on Addressing Lasting Trauma (the74million.org)
Over the course of about a week, three people with ties to mass school shootings died by apparent suicide, bringing to the forefront conversations about the long-term trauma of people who suffer losses from violence. About a quarter of the people who witness a mass shooting develop post-traumatic stress disorder and a third develop acute stress disorder, according to estimates by the National Center for PTSD, a division of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. While most survivors show...
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Amplifying empathy in teachers can help prevent student suspensions, researchers find
School suspension rates have risen in recent years. And since the punishment is linked to more severe problems later in life, such as dropping out of school or ending up in prison, researchers at Stanford University have been looking for ways to prevent it. Researchers asked one group of math teachers to complete a 45-minute online activity about how important it is to respect and humanize students. Meanwhile, another group of math teachers read about how to use technology in the classroom.
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An Alternative to Suspension with Trauma-Informed Dynamic Mindfulness: Building Stress Resilience, Emotion Regulation and Empathy
At the November 2019 Northern California Safe and Healthy Schools Conference at UC Berkeley, Niroga Program Managers Sam Weiss and Fatima Ahmed facilitated a session incorporating the theory and practice of Dynamic Mindfulness (DMind) to a standing room only crowd.