Tagged With "Toxic Stress"
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Free 'Resilience' online screening opportunity for members of National Association of School Psychologists
The National Association of School Psychologists is having a free virtual screening of the companion film to Paper Tigers called "Resilience" next week, November 16th. The last day to sign up is this upcoming FRIDAY, the 11th. Go HERE to get information about signing up: http://www.nasponline.org/research-and-policy/advocacy-tools-and-resources/school-psychology-awareness-week-2016/resilience-exclusive-virtual-film-screening-and-twitter-chat/resources Immediately following the screening,...
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From Trauma-Informed to Asset-Informed Care in Early Childhood [brookings.edu]
By Ellen Galinsky, Brookings Institute, October 23, 2019 The focus on “toxic stress,” ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences), and trauma-informed care have been game-changers in the field of early childhood development. They have helped us recognize the symptoms of trauma, provide appropriate assistance to children, and understand that prolonged adversity in the absence of nurturing relationships can derail a child’s healthy development. Just look at the media’s and the public’s reaction to...
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From Trauma to Peace: Mindfulness Program at Willard Middle School
From Berkeley Public Schools Fund, March 22, 2018 Once a week at Willard Middle School, there’s an unexpected sight of a classroom full of students sitting still with their eyes closed. With the support of our Strategic Impact Grant , Willard Middle School has implemented a weekly Dynamic Mindfulness program where students engage in mindful ABCs (Actions, Behaviors, and Centering) during their Advisory period. The 15-minute program involves grounding activities from listening to a bell until...
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Gage Middle School pilots transcendental meditation as model of ‘self-care’ (lausd.org)
L.A. Unified mental health experts say that self-care is the key to not simply surviving but thriving during the holidays and other times of stress. This means slowing down and taking time for yourself. Stretch your muscles before you get up in the morning, stick to your exercise routine and take time to take a deep breath and slow down. Through a grant from the California Endowment , funded by the David Lynch Foundation , students and staff at Gage Middle School are practicing...
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'Glen's Village' wins EWA award [TheNoteBook.org]
Glen's Village , a series and documentary illustrating the struggles and success of Philadelphia student Glen Casey in coping with childhood trauma to succeed in school and college, won first prize in its category in the Education Writers Association annual awards contest. The judges cited the work, written by Paul Jablow and directed by Dorian Geiger, as "a compelling view of the effect of adverse experiences and stress on a young person and a close look at the interventions and supports in...
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Glitter jars and breathing balls helping to reduce stress at Carrollton elementary (dallasnews.com)
Henry Zavala slowly expanded a plastic rainbow-colored sphere in front of his classmates at Davis Elementary School. The first-graders sat in a circle at the front of the classroom with crossed arms and eyes closed as they all took a deep breath in sync with the colorful expanding toy. The "breathing ball," as it's known among the students, is one of several mindfulness techniques the Carrollton school has adapted within the past three years. Lisa Williams, the school's principal, said she...
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Graduations, non-linear paths, & the importance of getting started
With graduation season upon us, I have been thinking a lot about one of my favorite graduation speeches. It’s the speech that Shonda Rhimes, creator of Grey’s Anatomy, gave in 2014 at Dartmouth College. She references the typical expected advice from a graduation speech: “Follow your dreams. Listen to your spirit. Change the world. Make your mark. Find your inner voice and make it sing. Embrace failure. Dream. Dream and dream big." And then she says, "I think that's crap."
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How to Build a Trauma-Sensitive Classroom Where All Learners Feel Safe (kqed.org)
Patricia Jennings, associate professor at the University of Virginia and author of the new book The Trauma-Sensitive Classroom , says that childhood trauma can have severe immediate and long-term consequences for students’ cognitive, social and emotional development. There is some hopeful news in the sobering research about kids and trauma. “We know enough about the science to know that teachers can make a huge difference,” said Jennings. “The school environment is one of the places where...
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Guidance for Teachers and Counselors to Help Kids at Risk at Home
People are beginning to be aware that one result of the increased stress around COVID-19 is the tragic fact that child abuse and neglect is increasing, but the safety net provided by schools is no longer in place. Teachers and counselors can continue to be a hero to students in this time of crisis, and can help mitigate the negative impact of traumatic events and stress. Caregivers might not be able to do it alone. We (Dr. Rachel Gilgoff, a child abuse pediatrician and trauma expert, and...
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Guide - Creating Trauma-Informed Policies: A Practice Guide for School and Mental Health Leadership
Author, Leora Wolf-Prusan, EdD, School Mental Health lead for SAMHSA's Mental Health Technology Center Pacific Southwest http://mhttcnetwork.org/mhttc/mhttc-psw.html Creating compassionate policies is a cornerstone strategy of educational leadership. This guide provides a deep dive into developing, implementing, and evaluating trauma-informed and compassionate school policies. It highlights four "choice points" for education and mental health leadership: Choice Point 1: Names &...
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Helping Students Overcome Toxic Stress through Science-Based Teaching Practices (stresshealth.org)
“What our students really crave the most is predictability from the adults interacting with them,” says Roger Sapp, a student success teacher at KIPP. For that reason, the one-on-one session is not a reward for being “good” or withheld if something bad happens. The kids who need it can count on it – every day. The scene is from a video by Edutopia (aka the George Lucas Educational Foundation), which has produced a series of more than 20 powerful, engaging shorts on how children learn in...
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Helping Traumatized Kids Return to The Classroom After a Disaster
This post draws on experiences and lessons learned from working during the recovery phase of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, La 2005. Disasters are calamitous events, traumatic and customarily outside the scope of normal human experiences and likely to involve psychological and physical injury. Disasters uniquely affect children because they are afflicted not only by the trauma of the event but also by their parents' fear and distress. When disasters strike, it disrupts the functioning of...
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Here's how educators are learning to empathetically foster resilience in children affected by trauma
By ESTELLE SLOOTMAKER | THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2019, Published in Second Wave Michigan This article is part of State of Health, a series examining integrated care and its potential to improve Michiganders' health. It is made possible with funding from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund. Divorce, a parent's death or imprisonment, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and the daily experience of racism. They're all sadly common events, known as adverse childhood experiences or ACEs. But the...
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Hillary Clinton’s Comprehensive Agenda on Mental Health [The Briefing—Fact Sheets]
The first bullet under Early Diagnosis and Intervention of today’s release of Hillary Clinton’s mental health agenda is titled “ Increase public awareness and take action to address maternal depression, infant mental health, and trauma and stress in the lives of young children.” It states “We also know that infant mental health depends on children forming close and secure relationships with the adults in their lives, and that too many children are growing up in environments that cause them...
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Holiday Stress, Self Care and Mirror Neurons
With Thanksgiving behind us, and the new year looming ahead, we are clearly in the midst of the holiday season. It is easy to focus on our students and their behavior this time of year. However, I would like to turn the focus back on us: the educators, caregivers and administrators. Though it is likely for different reasons than our students, many of us find the holidays to be a rather stressful time. You may be hosting, cooking, traveling, shopping, wrapping, financially strained,...
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Houston Teachers Drafted to Become Trauma Counselors [dailybeast.com]
As Houston ’s school district of more than 200,000 students scrambles to repair damaged schools before classes begin next week, they must also plan for traumatized students to enter the classroom. The Houston Independent School District is in the process of working with counsellors, nurses and social workers to develop a “mental health recovery plan” for the district’s hardest hit schools, according to a statement from HISD. In the meantime, Mental Health America of Greater Houston and...
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How Bibliotherapy Can Help Students Open Up About Their Mental Health (kqed.org)
Mental health concerns, like anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, can affect a student’s ability to concentrate, form friendships and thrive in the classroom. Educators and school counselors often provide Social and Emotional Learning programs (SEL) in order to help these students, as well as school-based therapeutic support groups. However, even in these forums, getting teenagers to speak about their problems can be challenging, especially when they feel like outsiders...
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How "Chair Yoga" supports SEL (smartbrief.com)
Eanes ISD in Austin, TX, where I am a behavior support teacher, is committed to preparing and inspiring all students for life-long success. We focus on the whole student, including social-emotional learning, collaboration, communication, problem-solving, stress-management and leadership, to name a few. Teaching these skills creates successful students and successful people. Research shows that when we experience stress, our brain’s ability to think logically goes “off line” because our...
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How childhood stress can impact mental health in adulthood [adn.com]
How childhood stress can impact mental health in adulthood by Jill Burke, Alaska Dispatch News Extreme stress and young brains are a bad combination, something that sets in motion feelings and behaviors that can haunt us long into adulthood. And just in time for the school year, a new study may help explain why. The Duke University study used neuro-imaging to look at the biological effect of childhood stress on the adult brain. It's important research, because it parallels existing knowledge...
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How COVID-19 Impacts Children’s Mental Health
Mental health among children and youth is already a concern. In 2018, there were 41,087 hospital discharges for mental health issues among California youth ages 5-19, a 38% increase in the last decade . With the emergence of COVID-19, children with existing mental health issues must endure the added burden of a pandemic. Children often rely on schools to provide mental health services, but school closures have made it difficult to access and preserve the quality of these services. Historical...
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How do these pediatricians do ACEs screening? Early adopters tell all.
Last week, three pediatricians — with a combined experience of 15 years integrating ACEs science into their practices — reflected on the urgency they felt several years ago that prompted them to begin screening patients for childhood adversity and resilience when there was practically no guidance at all. Along their journey , they accumulated a list of lessons learned for other pediatricians and family clinics to use. The three pediatricians participated in the ACEs Connection webinar,...
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How Facial Expressions of Adults Affect Children
Karen Murphy, who is principal at Free Orchards Elementary School where I work, is a champion of trauma awareness and is working hard to lead our school in the direction of trauma sensitive practices -and away from the policies & procedures that have historically made well-intentioned school districts part of the "pipeline to prison". One of her sayings is "fix yer face", which means simply to put a warm expression on your face, consciously and regularly.
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How It Feels & How We Heal: Parenting with ACEs Chat Quotes (You Tube, Database, PDFs, Links)
Parenting with ACEs is sharing inspiration, information, and expertise from our chat series in 3 formats. Parenting with ACEs: How It Feels & How We Heal Quote Collection (pdf version below as well) Quotes Database (pdf version below as well) Links to Chat Transcripts and before and after-the-chat blog posts. Thanks to everyone who showed up, who shared, and who is doing the important work that is our mission (prevent ACEs, heal trauma, build resilience). We know that work happens...
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How Lessons From Abroad Are Uplifting Youth In the United States [RWJF.org]
Like many high school graduates in Brazil, Caroline was eager to find a job. She desperately needed money to continue her studies and pursue her dream of becoming an engineer. But two years after graduating, she was still unemployed. Caroline eventually managed to improve her job prospects in an unlikely way—through drawing, dance and breath work. Intent on breaking free from a family history of women who weren’t able to get good jobs or finish high school, Caroline discovered a job training...
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How Making Time for Mindfulness Helps Students (kqed.org)
A new study suggests that mindfulness education — lessons on techniques to calm the mind and body — can reduce the negative effects of stress and increase students’ ability to stay engaged, helping them stay on track academically and avoid behavior problems. After finding that students who self-reported mindful habits performed better on tests and had higher grades, researchers with the Boston Charter Research Collaborative — a partnership between the Center for Education Policy Research at...
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How Mindfulness Can Help Teachers and Students Manage Challenging Situations (kqed.org)
Each moment comes with its own feeling quality—pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral—even if we’re not always aware of it. The basic attitude we humans share about experience is that we want more of the pleasant variety and less (or none) of the unpleasant. In fact, “stress” could be just another name for “unpleasant.” It’s important to note that there’s no advantage in seeking out unpleasant experiences and nothing wrong with enjoying, sustaining, and appreciating the pleasant ones. In fact,...
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How mindfulness practices are changing an inner-city school (washingtonpost.com)
The focus at Robert W. Coleman Elementary is not on punishment but on mindfulness — a mantra of daily life at an unusual urban school that has moved away from detention and suspension to something educators hope is more effective. Here, students are referred to the Mindful Moment Room when they misstep or need calming. In a space decorated with bright curtains, lavender cushions and beanbags, program staff members coax students to explain what happened, to talk about their feelings, to...
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"How Neglect and Abuse Change Children’s Brains — and Their Futures" by Katharine Gammon [centerforhealthjournalism.org]
Childhood adversity comes in different forms. When Katie McLaughlin, director of the Stress and Development Lab at the University of Washington, talks about stress and early childhood development, she brings up two different fictional children: One who faces the constant threat of violence at home, and one who is neglected. [For more of this article by Katharine Gammon, visit: https://www.centerforhealthjou...amp;utm_medium=email ]
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How Reflective Supervision Sessions Help Teachers Cope with the Stress of the Job (kqed.org)
These teachers see the impact of those challenges on their students every day — in the loud, disruptive behaviors they see in some children, or the quiet sadness they see in others. They fret about some of their students, bringing that worry home at the end of the day. For some, that can trigger difficult memories from their own childhoods. For others, it can affect their interactions with their own families. The sessions use an approach called reflective supervision that has long been used...
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How schools are making room for the military (districtadministration.com)
The life of a military family comes with a powerful sense of patriotism and pride, but also definite, daily challenges. Personnel are typically transferred every two to three years, which means their children may attend as many as nine schools during their lives. Add to that the stress these students suffer when parents are deployed overseas, are sent into combat or return home wounded. Military-connected students—compared to civilian classmates—have moderately elevated rates of just about...
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How Self-Compassion Can Help Teens De-stress (mindful.org)
Teen stress is on the rise. According to a new study, learning mindfulness and self-compassion can help a teen cope. In a 2014 national survey conducted by the American Psychological Association, 31 percent of adolescents aged 13 to 17 said that their stress increased in the previous year, and 42 percent said they were not doing enough to manage their stress. Adolescents who experience frequent stress are more prone to depression and perform worse in school Many teens turn to external...
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How Severe, Ongoing Stress can Affect a Child's Brain [Associated Press via kstp.com]
A quiet, unsmiling little girl with big brown eyes crawls inside a carpeted cubicle, hugs a stuffed teddy bear tight, and turns her head away from the noisy classroom. The safe spaces, quiet times and breathing exercises for her and the other preschoolers at the Verner Center for Early Learning are designed to help kids cope with intense stress so they can learn. But experts hope there's an even bigger benefit — protecting young bodies and brains from stress so persistent that it becomes...
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How the Stress of Racism Affects Learning [TheAtlantic.com]
For 15-year-old Zion Agostini, the start of each school day is a new occasion to navigate a minefield of racial profiling. From an early age, walking home from elementary school with his older brother, Agostini took note of the differential treatment police gave to black people in his community: “I [saw] people get stopped … get harassed … get arrested for minor offenses.” Almost a decade later, Agostini said he now faces the same treatment as a sophomore at Nelson Mandela School for Social...
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How To Apply The Brain Science Of Resilience To The Classroom (npr.org)
Chronic stress and uncertainty, not to mention missed meals and restless nights, make it physically and mentally difficult for children to concentrate or form trusting bonds with adults. They become hypervigilant, prone to emotional meltdowns, with bodies thrown into fight-or-flight mode at the slightest disturbance. "There's a body of knowledge that is not a hypothesis, it's a fact," says Dr. Pamela Cantor, the founder of Turnaround for Children. "Adversity alters how children develop as...
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How to Help Teenage Girls Reframe Anxiety and Strengthen Resilience (kqed.org)
Sometimes anxiety and stress reach levels that impede a girl’s ability to navigate life effectively. Dr. Lisa Damour has tips for parents and teens to help manage these situations. Damour, a psychologist and author of the new book "Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls," has spent decades working with adolescent girls and their families. In recent years, she has noticed a change in how society views stress. “Somehow a misunderstanding has grown up about...
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How to Keep Children's Stress From Turning Into Trauma [nytimes.com]
By Stacy Steinberg, The New York Times, May 7, 2020 Children may be processing the disruptions in their lives right now in ways the adults around them do not expect: acting out, regressing, retreating or even seeming surprisingly content. Parents need to know that all of this is normal, experts say, and there are some things we can do to help. “Our natural response to scary things is biologically to release stress hormones,” said Dr. Nadine Burke Harris , a pediatrician and surgeon general...
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How to Talk with Kids About COVID-19 [healthier.stanfordchildrens.org]
By Erin Digitale, Stanford Children's Health, March 10, 2020 As the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to spread, experts at Stanford Children’s Health have advice about how families can prepare their children for the continued news coverage and conversations around the outbreak. Parents and caregivers should communicate in an age-appropriate way that addresses children’s questions without stoking anxiety, says Stanford Children’s Health psychiatrist Victor Carrion, MD , who also directs...
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How Trauma Impairs Brain Function (The Best Possible Brain)
By Debbie Hampton, May 27, 2018, for The Best Brain Possible Trauma can actually alter the function of your brain during the stressful event and result in lasting changes in certain brain regions. These changes can impair cognitive function and memory encoding and recall at the moment and in the future. Recent neuroscientific findings in this area have real implications for the victims of crime and the legal system. The science of epigenetics is even showing that the effects of trauma can be...
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How Trauma-Informed Teaching Builds A Sense of Safety And Care (kqed.org)
‘They need that strong relational attachment with their teacher and that’s how you can feel secure and safe at school.’ Third grade teacher Anita Parameswaran is no stranger to students who have experienced trauma. She has taught kids who have experienced the effects of abuse, neglect and divorce. She had one student experience a huge setback when he learned his father was arrested and sent to jail. The student then became violent, throwing things, and hurting other students, according to...
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Hurtful Words: Association of Exposure to Peer Verbal Abuse With Elevated Psychiatric Symptom Scores and Corpus Callosum Abnormalities Martin H. Teicher, MD et. al.
Objective: Previous studies have shown that exposure to parental verbal abuse in childhood is associated with higher rates of adult psychopathology and alterations in brain structure. In this study the authors sought to examine the symptomatic and...
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'I Am a Fool to Do This Job': Half of Teachers Say They've Considered Quitting [edweek.org]
By Catherine Gewertz, Education Week, August 5, 2019 More than half of the country’s teachers say they’d go on strike for better pay if they had the chance, and half are so unhappy that they’ve seriously considered leaving the profession in the last few years, according to a poll released Monday. “I work 55 hours a week, have 12 years’ experience, and make $43k,” one teacher told researchers for the PDK survey. “I worry and stress daily about my classroom prep work and kids. I am a fool to...
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Improve Classroom Climate with Dynamic Mindfulness
Improve Classroom Climate with Dynamic Mindfulness January 2020 We know that challenges with toxic stress and trauma amongst our educators and the youth they serve affect learning readiness, school classroom climate, and teacher burnout. What can we do about it? Many educators are struggling with this question and searching for answers. Niroga Institute's Dynamic Mindfulness (DMind) programs should be considered as a comprehensive solution. Dynamic Mindfulness is a combination of movement,...
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Incorporating Trauma Informed Practice and ACEs into Professional Curricula - a Toolkit
The toolkit is designed to aid faculty and teachers in a variety of disciplines, specifically social work, medicine, law, education, and counseling, to develop or integrate critical content on adverse childhood experiences and trauma informed care into new or existing curricula of graduate education programs. This toolkit provides an overview of colleges and universities that have courses in trauma-informed practice and ACEs science. Most of the toolkit comprises content for a course on...
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Innovative School Program Seeks to Understand and Help Students Overcome Childhood Trauma [News.MPBN.net]
Studies have documented the connection between childhood trauma, and chronic disease and mental illness later in life. Some public schools in Maine are paying more attention to the impacts these experiences can have on student success. These schools are helping students identify — and cope with — the stressors that are effecting their lives. Waterville High School teacher Sherry Brown sees her students differently than she did several years ago. That's when she first learned about "adverse...
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Integrating ACEs science and trauma informed practices in your school district - what role does the administrator play?
Schools are the best opportunity to address ACEs on a large scale. Other than time at home, school is the place where children spend the majority of their time. And if a child's home life is full of strife, school might be the only place where the child feels safe. ACEs are common, and yet, it can be difficult to know which students need extra support. And rather than create additional programs that single out anyone or any group of students, and potentially having students fall through the...
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Interview: Trauma-Informed Care with Transition-Age Youth [psychologytoday.com]
Last month, an article titled “The Tragedy of Baltimore” in the New York Times Magazine described the upsurge in violence in a city long known for its “blight, suburban flight, segregation, drugs , racial inequality, [and] concentrated poverty.” At the center of the storm are transition-age youth, who too often face long odds and challenging futures in the communities where they live. I recently had the opportunity to talk with Patricia Cobb-Richardson , MS. For the past 20 years, she has...
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School documentary gets screening, discussion [TheNorthWestern.com]
Prevent Child Abuse Wisconsin, a program of Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin and Winnebago County Department of Human Services invites you to a free screening and guided discussion of "Paper Tigers". A documentary that follows a year in the life of the Lincoln High Alternative School, "Paper Tigers" explores the impact of adverse childhood experiences and toxic stress on struggling teens. The school is a testament to what the latest childhood adversity research is proving: one caring adult...
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Schools across St. Louis learning how past trauma hurts learning and affects behavior (stltoday.com)
Trauma-informed schools have been around for nearly a decade. Boston schools, for example, are considered a national model. In 2014, Massachusetts lawmakers passed comprehensive “safe and supportive schools” provisions to address trauma among public school students. In the past year, the concept has gained remarkable traction in the St. Louis region, in part because of a regional health initiative called Alive and Well STL . It was launched in the summer of 2015 just a few months before the...
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Schools combine meditation and brain science to help combat discipline problems (chalkbeat.org)
When students and teachers learn together about how their brains influence behavior, one expert says, discipline can become less of a confrontation and more of a partnership. The field of educational neuroscience is at the intersection of cognitive psychology, education and neuroscience, and some of its teachings suggest findings from brain research can be applied to classroom management and discipline techniques. Some trend toward the area of “mindfulness,” such as attempting to sharpen...
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Schools to take on 'emotional learning' (sandiegouniontribune.com)
At Cherokee Point Elementary School, first-grade teacher Hagit Patolai roams her classroom to asses student progress on a “fact versus opinion” writing assignment. She crouches down to read over the shoulder of a boy, asking him to point to the words (beautiful and cool) that indicate his illustrated story about a rainbow is based on his opinions. Why are people’s opinions important, she asks. It’s a question that gets at more than the lesson at hand. Patolai keeps detailed records on the...