Tagged With "Community Meeting"
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Healing ACE's
Healing Childhood Trauma I’d like to thank each member of ACE’s Connection for all your work helping and supporting children through various activities and organizations. You are clearly a collection of people who care about the children of the world. It is in recognition of these efforts that I ask you to consider two books on healing childhood trauma. They represent a life-time partnership dedicated to raising and educating healthy children. Secondly, I’d like to ask you for a word of...
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Healthy Body, Healthy Mind: A Social Emotional Health Twitter Chat
Wednesday, August 21st: join Alliance for a Healthier Generation @HealthierGen at 1 PM EST for a special chat to discuss the findings of our recent SEH market research study and the ways we can best meet the health needs of the #WholeChild —at school, during out-of-school time, and at home.
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Improving California school environments focus of pilot program (edsource.org)
This week the departments of education in Orange and Butte counties, along with UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools, announced a pilot program to develop a training curriculum based on multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS), an approach to learning and behavioral problems in which students progress through a range of interventions depending on their need levels. The program, which is funded by a $15-million grant that was part of the budget deal struck by Gov. Jerry Brown and the...
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Improving Traumatized Students’ Educational Outcomes by Shifting Away from Punitive and Towards Positive Discipline [trepeducator.org]
A Toolkit for Legislators, District Administrators, Principals, and Educators http://www.trepeducator.org/policy-toolkit This toolkit is designed to help stakeholders in our educational system advance current policies and practices in ways that will enable schools to better meet the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral needs of children and youth who have been exposed to traumatic stressors. To do so, this toolkit provides: Relevant information on trauma and the development of children...
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In Oklahoma City, a School Designed for Homeless Children [citylab.com]
How do you incorporate the specific needs of homeless children into the design of a school? That’s the question the Oklahoma City-based nonprofit organization Positive Tomorrows asked itself when it was daydreaming about a new building that could meet the many needs of its students. Positive Tomorrows has been educating homeless kids and providing social services to families since 1989. “There is no model for this type of school,” said Gary Armbruster, principal architect and partner at MA+...
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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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Is a Child in Danger from Fire at School or Bullying?
I wrote an article for Our Parenting Spot on the issue of Child Safety in Schools. I did research on what kind of standards the education system has that assures parents about safety in schools from threats such as fire or bullying. The way we handle these two dangers indicates that although we talk a great deal about bullying, we do not really treat it as a danger. This becomes strange and problematic when we look at the stats on injury and death by fire versus injury and death by bullying.
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Shootings & Suicides Past the Tipping-Point: ACEs Epidemic & Declining Lifespans in US
Re: Building community by facing collective trauma with hope I am writing from Broward county, Florida, the school district in which the MSD school shooting occurred and that gave rise to the March for Our Lives Movement sparked by our students. Mankind has developed solutions to deal with self-perpetuating waves and EPIDEMICS of BEHAVIORALLY TRANSMITTED Neuro-Toxic Stress, CPTSD Trauma & ACEs that cause FIXED-MINDSET reactive black and white Scarcity-based thinking to increase and...
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Some 350 Florida Leaders Expected to Attend Think Tank with Dr. Vincent Felitti, Co-Principal Investigator of the ACE Study; Expert on ACEs Science
Leaders from across the Sunshine State will take part in a “Think Tank” in Naples, FL, on Monday, August 6, to help create a more trauma-informed Florida. The estimated 350 attendees will include policy makers and community teams made up of school superintendents, law enforcement officers, judges, hospital administrators, mayors, PTA presidents, child welfare experts, mental health and substance abuse treatment providers, philanthropists, university researchers, state agency heads, and...
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Sonoma County Trauma-Informed Teaching: Knowing our Students' Stories and Fostering Resilience
Sonoma County Office of Education published this bulletin that provides an overview of ACEs science, trauma in Sonoma County, trauma-informed teaching strategies, and building resilience for teachers and students. It's attached to this post, and also available for download in this group's resources for download section.
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Teens are anxious and depressed, and turning to the school nurse for help. But most Illinois schools don’t have one. (chicagotribune.com)
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 1 in 20, or 2.6 million, U.S. children ages 6 to 17 had current anxiety or depression diagnosed by a health care provider in 2011-12. School nurses in Illinois say the increase is evident in the students from elementary to high school who enter their offices each day, requiring not only bandages and ice packs but also a quiet space to break from stress. Nurses now have to schedule meetings with parents about their child’s...
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The Educators Helping Students Through Trauma [theatlantic.com]
This story is part of a project The Hechinger Report did in collaboration with the local public radio station WWNO in New Orleans. The project reported on the traumatic experiences many young children in New Orleans are dealing with at home, and how some schools are turning to trauma-informed teaching to better serve these students. One of the students interviewed for the project was Sherlae, a 13-year-old student at Lawrence D. Crocker College Prep coping with a family mental-health crisis.
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Resources -- Training
Training programs oriented for an entire school or school district. If you recommend any others besides those listed here, please leave a comment in this blog post with a link and/or information.
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Ms. Jen's Level 1 Trauma-Sensitive Schools Training: July 15-17, 2018
Ms. Jen Alexander, experienced teacher, school counselor, author, presenter, and leader in the movement to create trauma-sensitive schools will hold her first ever Level 1 Trauma-Sensitive Schools Training this summer in scenic Cedar Falls, Iowa. Dates are Sunday, July 15 thru Tuesday, July 17, 2018 with the main training event taking place on Monday, July 16. Ms. Jen's new book for educators on the topic of creating trauma-sensitive schools will be published by Brookes in Baltimore, and...
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New Elementary and Secondary Education Law Includes Specific “Trauma-Informed Practices” Provisions
Legislation to replace the 14 year-old No Child Left Behind law—The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) signed by President Obama on Dec. 10—was widely praised by the administration, legislators of both parties in the House and Senate, and the organizations concerned about education policy from the NEA to the Education Trust. The consensus is that the bill is not perfect but provides a needed recalibration of federal authority over the states in education policy while protecting...
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New Guidance on Trauma Screening in Schools
In partnership with the Defending Childhood State Policy Initiative and the National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice, new guidance has been released on trauma screening in schools. Importantly, this document lays out a series of important considerations when determining whether trauma screening is indicated in each context, and how to go about collecting and utilizing the data generated from the process. Please feel free to share input.
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New Research on Community Schools Is Prompting New School Improvement Partnerships
The Center for American Progress (CAP) has a long history of advocating for test-driven, market-driven school reforms. I doubt that the CAP is ready to abandon its belief that better instruction, leadership, data-driven accountability, and choice can drive systemic improvement in the highest-poverty schools, but a recent panel discussion, which was aired on CSPAN , indicates that it is open to social and cognitive science research which argues for a more holistic approach to school...
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New Resource Guide for Child Sexual Abuse/Exploitation Prevention
Greetings, ACN Community! I wanted to share this fantastic new resource guide developed by one of the work groups from the Georgia Statewide Human Trafficking Task Force. This guide provides background on best practice, principles of prevention, identifying resources for the classroom, developing a prevention plan, age appropriate teaching suggestions, analysis of specific programs, and guidelines for implementation and evaluation. It is really quite thorough and is full of excellent ideas...
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Now available: recording of Chris Blodgett's talk on trauma-informed communities
Dr. Chris Blodgett spoke on Thursday, Nov 3rd at the Anchorage Loussac Library to a room of nearly 140 people and 60 more online. His talk "From ACEs to Action: How Communities Can Improve Well-Being and Resilience" was approximately two hours long. Access the webinar video, audio file, and slides here.
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Brain Development and Academic Achievement
"As much as 20% of the gap in test scores could be explained by maturational lags in the frontal and temporal lobes. ... The influence of poverty on children’s learning and achievement is mediated by structural brain development. To avoid...
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Butte Valley teachers work to expand students’ options [Siskiyou Daily News]
By David Smith / dsmith@siskiyoudaily.com Even though it serves just 98 students in an economically depressed area, Butte Valley High School in Dorris [CA] is offering more opportunities than ever for those students to expand everything from their creativity to their career options. Much like an eight person football team – which BVHS fields each year – teachers at the school take on different roles throughout the day . Instead of the star linebacker also being the team’s kicker, an English...
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Can a nonprofit turn around a school in a juvenile detention facility? (hechingerreport.org)
New Orleans: As recently as a decade ago, the Youth Study Center would have been unlikely to attract an educational pioneer to their juvenile detention facility. The roughly 40 teenagers held in the flood-damaged center rarely made it to class because they were often on lockdown 23 hours a day. The staff had a reputation for incompetence. The building itself was plagued with bugs and mold. But this summer, the Orleans Parish School Board signed over operations of the school to the national...
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‘Change in culture’: New California guidelines aim to help teach social, emotional skills [Press Democrat]
The nation’s schools long ago broadened their missions beyond the teaching of academic subjects and participation in extracurricular activities. Educators have for decades been entrusted to teach students a wider range of life skills, including those that touch on emotions, empathy and relationships with other people. Now, a new state guide , released Wednesday, offers a slew of resources for teachers and administrators seeking to bolster kids’ social and emotional development. “Science...
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Is your school a buffer zone against toxic stress?
The challenge of the fast pace and the strain of living in the 21 st century is the chronic stress of keeping up with volume of information, expectations and adverse experiences that leads to stressors of daily living. Adults have become good at adjusting to and compartmentalizing these stressors. Children and adolescents however are struggling to keep up and are in fact caving under the weight of the stresses. In addition, many children lack adequate nurturing and supports needed to give...
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journal article: Responding to Students with PTSD in Schools
Child Adolesc Psychiatr Clin N Am . 2012 January Responding to Students with PTSD in Schools Sheryl Kataoka, MD, MSHS, Audra Langley, PhD, Marleen Wong, PhD, Shilpa Baweja, MA, and Bradley Stein, MD, PhD The prevalence of trauma exposure among youth is a major public health concern, with a third of adolescents nationally reporting that they have been in a physical fight in the past twelve months and 9% having been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property. Studies have...
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Kids Artwork - The Key to Communications & Goal Setting
Crayons can do wonders. Not just to make colorful rainbows and unicorns but as a vital tool used for communication between students and between the student and their teachers and parents. Janai Mestrovich (BS/MS, Family & Child Development, Ashland, OR) incorporates kid art into her SuperKid Power curriculum. Here are several examples from the kids (pre-K and Kindergarten) reflecting goals the kids said they were thinking about or that concerned them. in the first example, a young boy...
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Lessons from the Los Angeles and Oakland teachers' strikes [edsource.org]
After two teachers’ strikes in as many months in California, it is too soon to tell whether the labor disputes in Oakland and Los Angeles presage a new era of school-based activism. But regardless of what comes next, this year’s strikes had much in common, and yielded valuable lessons and insights for other districts where labor troubles may also be brewing. Both strikes were relatively short, lasting about a week. The timeline was shaped by the troubled finances of both districts that...
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Making Good Ideas Go Viral (ssir.org)
A less-traveled path to education reform: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is catalyzing three social forces to create an epidemic of best practice . Ashoka founder and CEO Bill Drayton recently wrote about his vision for a “changemaker world”—a place where problems can’t outrun solutions. He told a story about Ali Raza Khan, an entrepreneur in Pakistan, who tasked 6,000 poor students with starting successful ventures. He explains how, with little more than hearty encouragement, the...
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Meet the 18-Year-Old Entrepreneur Fixing Food for Gen Z (civileats.com)
Haile Thomas—activist, health coach, vegan chef, public speaker, and CEO of HAPPY—is on a mission to help young people eat healthier. Haile Thomas is not your typical Gen Z teenager. The 18-year-old activist, health coach, vegan chef, and public speaker became the CEO of her nonprofit organization, Healthy Active Positive Purposeful Youth (HAPPY), when she was just 12 years old, inspired by witnessing her father fight off Type 2 diabetes with healthy eating and exercise. Since then, HAPPY...
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Meet The Startup Healing Trauma One Text At A Time [Forbes.com]
Photo: Ashley Edwards and Alina Liao at UC Berkeley School of Business after winning 2nd place at the 2016 Global Social Innovation Competition. In 2016, the 30 largest cities in the United States experienced a double-digit increase in violent crime. From reports of shootings in Chicago to gang-related violence in LA , the media is constantly flooded with stories of violence in our urban communities. The effect this has is numbing: most of the time, one doesn’t stop to think of the lives...
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Meeting the Needs of Whole Families Leads to Student Success [EdWeek.org]
From Education Week: A profile of an Oregon town that used the community school model to co-locate services that meet the needs of whole families. "The centers seem to have been a catalyst for community enthusiasm, growing well beyond their original vision in ways both big and small".
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The Monumental Task Of Reopening Puerto Rico's Schools [npr.org]
The schools in Puerto Rico are facing massive challenges. All the public schools are without electricity, and more than half don't have water. More than 100 are still functioning as shelters. But Puerto Rico's secretary of education, Julia Keleher, tells us that the schools that are open are serving as connection points for communities. They've become a place where children and their families can eat a hot meal and get some emotional support, too. [For more on this story by MERRIT KENNEDY,...
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The Real Crisis in Education: An Open Letter to the Department of Education by Krista Taylor
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos U.S. Department of Education 400 Maryland Avenue, SW Washington, D.C. 20202 Governor John Kasich Riffe Center, 30th Floor 77 South High Street Columbus, OH 43215-6117 Superintendent of Public Instruction Paolo DeMaria Ohio Department of Education 25 South Front Street Columbus, OH 43215-4183 Dear Secretary DeVos, Governor Kasich, and Superintendent DeMaria: I write to each of you, in my position as a teacher in the Cincinnati Public Schools, to ask for...
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The Relentless School Nurse: Candida Rodriguez is Creating Community Through the Power of Conversations That Matter
Candida Rodriguez is my mentor, while she may disagree with that statement and say it is the opposite, it is the absolute truth. My respect, admiration, and amazement at the depth of her knowledge, talent, and compassion astound me every time we work together. Candida serves her complex and ever-changing community with dedication, skill and a relentless pursuit of coordinating care for her students and families. We are partners in the Community Cafe Initiative that began in 2015 after I...
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The Relentless School Nurse: Dr. Beth Jameson Challenges School Nurses to be #ResourceSponges
Beth Jameson, Ph.D., RN, NJ-CSN is a Nurse Scientist with a newly minted Ph.D. from Rutgers University. I was fortunate to meet Beth when she was in the midst of her dissertation research, which included interviewing school nurses about job satisfaction. I will never forget our intense and honest discussion when I shared my frustration with feeling like a “caged bird” at school. In fact, it was so eye-opening that I wrote a blog post called “The Tale of the Caged Bird.” Beth and I bonded...
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The Relentless School Nurse: Imagine the School Nurse as the Chief Wellness Officer
My summers are spent teaching at Rutgers-Camden School of Nursing in the School Nurse Certificate Program. It is truly one of my most cherished roles and this summer was no exception. Every year I learn alongside my students, all who are adult learners returning to school to meet the state requirements to become school nurses. But truthfully, it is so much more than only meeting course requirements. The students are vulnerable, learning a new nursing specialty, and challenging themselves in...
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The Relentless School Nurse: Pediatricians + School Nurses = Powerful Partners
Pediatricians and school nurses are powerful partners when we intentionally collaborate to improve the continuity of care in the populations we serve. It is the intentionality of relationship building that can bear the most fruitful outcomes to improve the health and well-being of our most vulnerable population, our children. We are far more effective working in concert than in our silos. School communities are looking for guidance, answers, and action to address the explosion of...
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The Relentless School Nurse: When the Health Office Pass Includes Emotions
The collaboration between school counselors and school nurses creates safe spaces for students at school. Building a coalition between school counselors and school nurses creates a safety net for our most complex and challenging students while benefiting the whole school community. Promoting connections through intentional relationship building, and ensuring a school environment that is physically, emotionally and psychologically safe changes the culture and climate. Read about an amazing...
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The State of America’s Student-Teacher Racial Gap: Our Public School System Has Been Majority-Minority for Years, but 80 Percent of Teachers Are Still White [the74million.org]
In 2014, according to U.S. Department of Education projections, the demographics of the nation’s classrooms were set to break a historic barrier: For the first time, the majority of students in America’s public schools would no longer be white. Based on population trends, National Center for Education Statistics predicted that 50.3 percent of the student body for the 2014-15 school year would be people of color — a precursor to the country as a whole becoming majority-minority in the next...
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The teacher: Childhood trauma informed senator’s legislative success [NMPolitics.net]
She was 3 years old when her father died in a car crash and 17 when her mother committed suicide. In between those bookends of loss, she lived with the man she refers to as “my evil stepfather. ” He demeaned her, her two older sisters and her younger brother, and punished them with a belt when they didn’t meet his exacting standards. To read the full story - click the blue link at the bottom of the post - As the sun fades and her office on the fourth floor of the state Capitol darkens –...
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This New York City charter network is taking its lessons to toddlers [chalkbeat.org]
Preschool is already too late, if you ask Ian Rowe. The head of Public Prep charter schools in New York City believes that, when it comes to setting students up for academic success, the key is starting earlier. Much, much earlier. That’s why the network has teamed up with a pair of nonprofits to start getting children ready for school when they’re just toddlers — a full two years before even enrolling in pre-K. The unique partnership sends trained mentors to meet with families in their own...
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Reframing Undesired Behaviors as an Aspect of Learning, not Punishment
At the Chula Vista, National City, and Linda Vista resource centers of Learn4Life Innovation High School San Diego, only four students were suspended during the 2016-17 school year – less than 1 percent of the student population of more than 500 students. For the leadership team and staff at Innovation High School this rate was still too high. The team and staff embraced further training on restorative practices, positive behavior supports and interventions in order to better support student...
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Relationship, Responsibility, and Regulation: Trauma-Invested Practices for Fostering Resilient Learners (ascd.org)
In this stirring follow-up to the award-winning Fostering Resilient Learners, Kristin Van Marter Souers and Pete Hall take you to the next level of trauma-invested practice. To get there, they explain, educators need to build a "nest"—a positive learning environment shaped by three new Rs of education: relationship , responsibility , and regulation . Drawing from their extensive experience working with schools, students, and families throughout the country, the authors Explain how to create...
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Relationships That Heal: Building a Community to Combat Childhood Trauma
“I just wish I had an adult to talk to.” That was the response of over 80 percent of teenagers in a survey commissioned by Laura Porter when asked: If you could have one helpful thing in your life, what would it be? Porter, a former county commissioner in Washington state is now the co-founder of ACE Interface , an organization that provides schools and communities with the tools to combat childhood trauma. The survey was part of her research to get a handle on what was happening with young...
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Relax, heal, learn (thenotebook.org)
Pam Bunyon faced the 4th graders, some splayed in chairs but most arrayed on the rug before her. On the whiteboard, she showed them the outline of a human head. Next to it were some big words for the 9- and 10-year-olds: Cortex . Amygdala . Brain stem . Bunyon, the counselor at Powel Elementary School, was using science to help students understand their impulses and give them strategies to deal with them. “So we don’t flip out,” as she and the class put it. Bunyon took classes on anger,...
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Resource list -- Practices & Frameworks
All of these practices and frameworks are -- or should be -- informed by the new knowledge about the unified science of human development, aka ACEs writ large, or NEAR science. This encompasses the epidemiology of adverse childhood experiences (ACE studies), the neurobiology of toxic stress, the biomedical and epigenetic consequences of toxic stress, and resilience research. Frameworks and Models Attachment, Self-Regulation and Competency (ARC) Source: The Trauma Center at the...
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Resource List - Research & Reports
Reports and research about how ACEs affect schoolchildren, or about how schools become trauma-informed, or the outcomes of integrating trauma-informed and resilience-building practices in schools. If you recommend any others besides those listed here, please leave a comment with a link and/or information.
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Resource List - Tutorials (Online)
Online tutorials about adverse childhood experience, neurobiology of toxic stress and how children's learning is affected by trauma. If you recommend any others besides those listed here, please leave a comment in this blog post with a link and/or information.
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Rising High: Los Angeles School Aimed at Disconnected Youth Expands [ChronicleOfSocialChange.org]
When high school student Kia Reid’s brother was arrested, she withdrew emotionally, missing more than a week of school. But in her absence, Reid didn’t fall through the cracks. Her teachers texted and called to check on her. “They told me [they were] not here to pressure me, but they wanted me to keep on track with my schoolwork.,” Reid said. “They were really patient, and even came over to my house and brought me my work and went over all [of it] with me.” Reid graduated in the spring with...