Tagged With "at-risk youth"
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“Disgraceful” Disparities In School Discipline Funnel Kids Into Justice System [witnessla.com]
By Taylor Walker, Witness LA, November 11, 2019 Research and the national conversation around racial disparities in school discipline have largely remained focused on the outsized disparate treatment that black students receive when compared with their white peers. Yet Native American youth face much the same disciplinary treatment in schools that black students do, according to a report from San Diego State University and Sacramento Native American Higher Education Collaborative (SNAHEC)...
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Diverting the School to Prison Pipeline Through School Connectedness
What if the we could stifle the School to Prison Pipeline by simply creating a culture of belonging and inclusion in elementary school? The need for caring classrooms that promote a sense of connectedness and belonging is essential and must begin the day a child begins their educational experience. In many, not all, underserved communities, minority students are being taught by less experienced teachers who have emanated from culturally and economically incongruent backgrounds. Furthermore,...
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Do you live in Arizona, Hawaii, California, Nevada or the US Pacific Islands? Come to our no-cost mental and school mental health Winter Institute!
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During COVID-19, how does a trauma-informed school pivot to distance learning?
Antioch Middle School seventh-grader Alyssia Garcia was accustomed to scanning the cafeteria during lunch for kids who might need her assistance. “I’d look for kids who looked sad, kids who were sitting alone, kids who looked angry,” says Garcia, a peer advocate at her school. Alyssia Garcia When she’d spot students sitting alone or looking sad, she’d approach them and ease into conversation. “If it’s a sad person, I’ll try to cheer them up or ask them what the problem is,” she says. “If...
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Early childhood educators learn new ways to spot trauma triggers, build resilience in preschoolers
A hug may be comforting to many children, but for a child who has experienced trauma it may not feel safe.
That’s an example used by Julie Kurtz, co-director of trauma informed practices in early childhood education at the WestEd Center for Child & Family Studies (CCFS), as she begins a trauma training session. Her audience, preschool teachers and staff of the San Francisco-based Wu Yee Children’s Services at San Francisco’s Women’s Building, listen attentively.
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Educational success curbs effects of child abuse, neglect [sciencedaily.com]
The emotional and sexual abuse that some children endure can lead them to commit crimes later in life. But when children achieve good grades and don't skip school, the likelihood of self-reported, chronic criminal behaviors declines significantly, according to researchers at the University of Michigan and University of Washington. This new ongoing study is one of the few in the nation to follow the same individuals over several decades to learn about how child maltreatment -- described as...
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Educational Trauma: Examples From Testing to the School-to-Prison Pipeline (Dr. Lee-Anne Gray)
Educational Trauma is the inadvertent and unintentional perpetration and perpetuation of harm in schools. The use of standards and the normal distribution or the bell curve to rank students and identify those at risk of developing problems later is born in the same theories and practices as eugenics. Eugenics practices thrive in schools and feed the school-to-prison pipeline, which is the most extreme example of Educational Trauma. This book ambitiously aims to open a feld of inquiry into...
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Equal Footing: Oakland Program Keeps Foster Youth on Track to Graduate with Their Peers [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
When Tramischa Cole , a homeless 24-year-old mother of one, stumbled across a Civicorps flier in 2015, she didn’t expect to be accepted into the Bay Area’s only accredited high school and job training program for 18 to 26 year olds. It’s not that Civicorps had a waiting list: Cole was worried her parenting responsibilities and lack of housing would be an issue. “I told them I’m homeless and I don’t have child care,” Cole said. “I thought everything I was telling them would be something to...
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Escondido Union School District Introduces Trauma Informed Strategies (livewellsd.org)
The Escondido Union School District (EUSD) values its staff, students and families. The district welcomed their 1,800 employees to the 2017-2018 school year through events coordinated to connect staff to each other, develop a trauma informed school system and encourage staff wellness and self-care during events held on the first staff work days of the school year. On Thursday August 10 th , all EUSD employees attended an inspirational presentation by Dr. Dawn Griffin, Associate Professor and...
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Expanding concepts of youth adversity: Relationships with a positive Patient Health Questionnaire-2 [Journal of Pediatric Health Care]
" Research suggests that diverse examples of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) may link to health. This study examines relationships between conventional (abuse, neglect, household dysfunction) and expanded examples (bullying, safety perceptions) of ACEs and adolescent mental health among youth participating in a statewide school-based survey," To read more of the abstract and for full text access options, please click on the link: ...
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Federal Grants for Trauma-Informed Interventions in Schools
As Elizabeth Prewitt reported in the recent blog post-- President Trump signs opioid legislation with significant trauma provisions -- the Support for Patients and Communities Act (H.R.6) includes significant provisions increasing trauma-informed best practices in multiple settings. Section 7134. Grants to improve trauma support services and mental health care for children and youth in educational settings authorizes $50,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2019 through 2023 for these grants.
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For anxious students, a teacher who comes to your house might be the answer (hechingerreport.org)
Cousins says she is “not a book person.” During her childhood of dealing with family strife, which took her to towns across rural Maine, rarely staying at a school for longer than a year or two, learning was never a priority. “It was never something I looked forward to — all day, every day,” she said. She dropped out shortly after her 16th birthday. But last summer, Cousins’ mother-in-law told her about Threshold, a program developed by a Maine charter school aimed specifically at students...
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For those that ordered... the trauma-informed curriculum for churches is headed out the door this week!
It's been a labor of love more than a year in the making, and it is exciting to see the curriculum come together and head out to those that will give this first version a "test drive" this spring and (hopefully) give me some great feedback so I can make improvements over the summer and make the curriculum better! It is called "Bruised Reeds and Smoldering Wicks: a six week study of trauma-informed ministry and compassionate care for children from hard places and situations." The study is...
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Foster Students at Learn4Life Graduating at Rates Higher Than the California State Average (learn4life.org)
Foster youth face multiple obstacles that make it hard to succeed in high school. According to the National Foster Youth Institute , only about half of the nation’s youth raised in foster care end up finishing high school. As such, Learn4Life identified the challenges and solutions for this student population and set up a needs-based support team. Over the past three years, Learn4Life has doubled its foster student graduation rate to 77 percent in the 2018-19 school year, exceeding the...
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From Suspension to Support in the Early Grades [chdi.org]
Connecticut has been at the forefront of the national movement to reduce suspensions and expulsions of young children in recent years. School suspensions and expulsions can be harmful for children, particularly in the earliest grades. When a young child’s challenging behavior is met with exclusionary discipline rather than behavioral health support they are at greater risk for negative outcomes in the areas of social-emotional development, behavior, health, and education. In 2015,...
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From Trauma Informed To Trauma Transformed: Achieving Post-Traumatic GROWTH for the Youths In Our Most Disenfranchised Public Schools and Communities
Roberto Rivera was a troubled, addicted youth engaged in criminal behavior who discovered his path to transformation in the pit of his traumatic pain. He harnessed the fire of early childhood trauma to change himself from being a problem to being a solution, not just in his own life, but also in the lives of many, many other under-privileged and under-performing young people. The name of his solution is Fulfill The Dream (FTD). FTD is a unique, hip-hop(e) based, Social Emotional Learning...
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Get Lit Program at Learn4Life Charter Schools Ignites Passion for Poetry while Mending Hearts and Souls
Learn4Life students in Fresno carry hardship and experience trauma, many of them without ever having the opportunity to process what they have been through, let alone heal. The Get Lit program focuses on taking those personal traumas and turning them into poetry, giving students a voice and the confidence to use it. The trauma that Learn4Life students have analyzed in the class include issues with disabilities, mental and physical illnesses, physical and mental abuse, drug and alcohol...
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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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Hanna Center takes ‘trauma care’ on the road
For 72 years, Hanna Boys Center has been a place of refuge for disadvantaged boys – boys who, largely by circumstance, were in trouble. Dysfunctional homes, neighborhood violence, feral upbringings, drug abuse: Hanna Boys Center has sheltered all kinds. Over those decades Hanna Boys Center has established itself as a leader in transformational protocols, a vanguard on the fractious front advocating for at-risk youth. ..... ..... Trauma-informed care argues that children who’ve experienced...
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Head Start Prevents Foster Care? To Be Decided [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
The jury is decidedly out on the academic track record of Head Start, the education-oriented pre-school program for low-income families invented in the 1960s and federally proliferated in the early 1980s. Critics will point to large impact studies that show early academic gains fade by third grade. Proponents will say that those gains would stick if the students ended up in better public schools. But Youth Services Insider had never seen Head Start mentioned as a possible preventer of foster...
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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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Homework: Moving Toward Compassionate, Trauma-Informed Schools
It was the little red trauma-informed schoolhouse. Katherine Wickersham-Wade, the Nay’dini’aa Na’ Kayax (Chickaloon Village) clan grandmother who started the Ya Ne Dah Ah School , Alaska’s first Tribally operated school in 1992, might not have used that language. But she did envision a school that would wrap its students in Native ancestral traditions and Ahtna language, instill self-confidence and repair some of the damage inflicted by historical trauma—the disruptions to culture and...
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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 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 Does Education in the Juvenile-Justice System Measure Up? It Doesn't. [edweek.org]
Imagine a school system where some of our country's most underserved students have limited access to grade-level math and science courses, pass rates for those classes are significantly lower than those of their peers in nearby schools, and accurate enrollment information is only available for a fraction of eligible youths. And in that system, 44 percent of youths are black . This describes the education system experienced by students attending school while incarcerated in juvenile...
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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 One Philadelphia After-school Program Works to Be Trauma-informed [youthtoday.org]
On an afternoon in October, kids in the Sunrise of Philadelphia after-school program made tissue-paper marigolds, assembled little altars and created masks. It was the Day of the Dead celebration held by Sunrise partner, Fleisher Art Memorial . They wrote poems about people who were no longer with them, either lost to death or simply separated across distance — a possibility in this largely immigrant and refugee community. The activity gave them a chance to explore loss and sadness, which —...
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How running a school on Rikers Island shaped the superintendent of New York’s little-known District 79 (chalkbeat.org)
(Tim) Lisante is the superintendent of New York City’s District 79, which consists of over 14,000 students who have fallen behind in high school, been involved in the criminal justice system, or who have special needs such as drug treatment, job training or child care. Lisante said he is especially focused on the formerly incarcerated youth he first saw when he started as assistant principal — because they often need the most help. New York has come under scrutiny for how it treats youth in...
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How Schools For Kids In Foster Care Act As ‘Educational Black Holes’ [HuffingtonPost.com]
PHILADELPHIA and GREENVILLE, Pa. — Back when he still lived with his family, when school was across the street from his home in West Philadelphia, Johnathan Hamilton used to plow through reading assignments and research religious questions online. He stumbled over fractions — math was always a struggle — but started getting into philosophy as an early teen. Then, at 15, his relationship with his parents grew violent, and Hamilton went to live in a city shelter for foster youth. When a bed...
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How Teachers, Adults, and Legislators Can Respond to Student Homelessness (americaspromise.org)
What should teachers do if they suspect a student might be homeless? What about non-educators? Better yet, what can governors and legislators do to fight youth homelessness on a broad scale in their states and communities? These are a few questions that a panel of experts tackled at SXSWEDU , where a group of nonprofits announced the Education Leads Home campaign , a first-of-its-kind national campaign that will focus exclusively on addressing the educational needs of the 1.3 million...
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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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Improving the Efficacy of Mindfulness in Schools [madinamerica.com]
A new study, published in Mindfulness, explores moderating factors on the effects of mindfulness interventions for young peoples’ mental health in school settings. The results of the meta-analysis indicate individual differences in student’s ages, teacher’s experiences, and the delivery method may influence the receptivity and effectiveness of school-based mindfulness programs. There is a buzz about mindfulness in the current culture as research has demonstrated the benefits of mindfulness...
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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 Sacramento, Youth Activists Push to Get Police Out of Schools [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
By Susan Abram, The Chronicle of Social Change, January 6, 2020 As a 10th grader at Sacramento’s Luther Burbank High School, Stephanie Lopez remembers when she saw a school resource officer treat her brother like a criminal. Her brother had bumped into the officer and apologized, Lopez said. But the officer proceeded to question him and asked him for his ID. “It was all new to me,” said Lopez, now 17 and a senior, of the aggressive approach the officer used with her brother. “When I was...
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In Search of the Missing ACEs...
I remain forever grateful that my long felt and seeming innate knowledge ( actually garnered from personal experience, work with traumatised animals and people ) has been evidenced and validated by the amazing work of Vincent Felitti and Robert Anda. They created the peg I, we, can hang our experience and expertise on and work to best apply our skills to assist others. With ACEs I am now able to communicate my knowledge with clients, colleagues and communities with the additional confidence...
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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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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 Walkout: An Adult Ally Guide (youthempowerment.com)
Amplify their voice, not yours. Broadcast your willingness to be a "helper". Assume competence in youth leadership. Don't assume anything else. The moment news spread that the students of Parkland, Florida were using their voices to speak out against school violence, Rep. Shawn Harrison staffer claimed that the students were paid actors. This reaction isn’t uncommon. Some adults in positions of power are hesitant to include youth voice in the public sphere, and some will use any means...
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Social-Emotional Life Skills Wrapped Up in Fun
This past school year Every Neighborhood Partnership (ENP) had a great opportunity to collaborate with two Fresno Unified Elementary schools, Fresno State, Fresno City College and Alliant International University to pilot two unique programs that help to build resiliency and social-emotional life skills. Through this collaborative partnership, ENP was able to facilitate two evidence-based programs that help students to build and develop social and emotional life skills through yoga 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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Spectrum Health Launches School-Based Telehealth Pilot Program (mhealthintelligence.com)
Michigan’s Spectrum Health is piloting a school-based telehealth program that aims to give rural high school students better access to telemental health services. Greenville Public Schools is partnering with the Grand Rapids-based health system to give students at the high school access to a Master’s-level social worker through a telemedicine portal. The counselor, working out of Spectrum Health’s Lakeview Youth Clinic, can schedule as many as a half-dozen virtual visits a day with students...
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Start Talking with All Students About Consent (acsd.org)
Sex education is about so much more than just sex. A 4-year-old can learn that he has the right to control who touches him. A 6-year-old can learn the correct names of her body parts, so she is able to more accurately report abuse . We can teach 9-year-olds to understand that they can like a toy regardless of whether it's a "girl's" or "boy's" color. At Advocates for Youth , where I lead creative programs to educate and mobilize youth, we believe sex ed should start early in a child's life...
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Student Discipline & Co-Regulation
Co-regulating Students Correcting student behavior is part of our work as educators yet often it can lead to escalation of student behaviors. As teachers we can learn ways that can lead to students actually hearing what it is we say. Note: For anything positive to come of our concern both the adult and the young person need to be in the executive center of our brains!! I intentionally use the term "care-fronting" rather then confronting. As teachers and administrators we want to learn skills...
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Students' traumas prompt N.Y. educators to learn how to reach out effectively (democratandchronicle.com)
New York educators seeking better ways to deal with students' trauma, anxiety, depression and stress gathered Thursday in Greece. Educators from across the state said they attended to be proactive, looking for services and strategies to better help students. "I don't feel qualified for all of it," Carrie Seitz, a Rochester City School District teacher in the youth and justice program, said about addressing traumas that her students have experienced. However, "kids are craving the connection"...
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Subtle factors combine to fuel school-to-prison pipeline [NonDoc.com]
T he Oklahoma Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has published a study examining the civil rights impact of school discipline and juvenile-justice policies. The study explains how excessive and disparate suspensions of students “may lead to high rates of juvenile incarceration” — particularly among youth of color, boys and students with disabilities — in what has become known as the school-to-prison pipeline. In its report released this month, the committee issued a...
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Suspension rates for black male students in California higher for foster youth, rural students (EdSource)
Black male students in rural counties and those in foster care are suspended at some of the highest rates in California, a new report has found. The report also found that the disparity in suspension rates among black male students compared to all students is greatest in kindergarten through the 3rd grade. The report, titled " Get Out! Black Male Suspensions in California Public Schools ," looked at suspensions through the 2016-17 school year. It was authored by J. Luke Wood and Frank Harris...
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Teaching Adult Wary Children and Youth
Secure, trusting bonds are essential if young people are to grow, learn, and thrive (Baumeister, 2011; Brendtro, Brokenleg, & Van Bockern, 2005; Shulevitz, 2013). Today there are literally millions of young people disconnected and living in violent communities with over stressed families and schools that are depersonalized. They traverse dangerous communities and the ecology in which they live is one of extreme levels of toxic stress. The most troubled and troubling kids display...
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Teaching Adult Wary Children and Youth
Secure, trusting bonds are essential if young people are to grow, learn, and thrive !!(Baumeister, 2011; Brendtro, Brokenleg, & Van Bockern, 2005; Shulevitz, 2013). Today there are literally millions of young people disconnected and living in violent communities with over stressed families and schools that are depersonalized. They traverse dangerous communities and the ecology in which they live is one of extreme levels of toxic stress. The most troubled and troubling kids display...
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Teen suicide clusters prompt mandate for California schools to confront taboo topic (calmatters.org)
In California and across the country, suicide is the second leading cause of death among teens—a grim reminder that many high school students’ primary barrier to adulthood is themselves. More young people take their own lives than the number killed by cancer, heart disease, birth defects, stroke, flu, pneumonia and chronic lung disease combined. And under legislation set to take effect in January, school systems up and down the state will be forced to confront the taboo topic head-on.
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Teenagers Report a Surge in Bullying During a Divisive Election Season [PSMag.com]
A new national survey of more than 50,000 teenagers charts a surge in abusive and hateful behavior among young people since the beginning of the presidential election campaign. “Our biggest takeaway was that 70 percent of all respondents had witnessed bullying, hate speech, or harassment since the 2016 election,” said Allison Turner, assistant press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, a prominent LGBT advocacy group that conducted the survey. HRC polled a large, though not...