Tagged With "First 5"
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"Gots" and "Wants" from NE Michigan's Trauma-Informed Schools
We had our first meeting for Trauma-Informed Schools last week. Here is a link to the article published in the Alpena News by Jordan Travis http://www.thealpenanews.com/p...havior.html?nav=5004 . The turnout and engagement was...
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Growth through Trauma-Informed Strategies: Coaching and Consultation with Rick Griffin
There is a Chinese proverb that states, “If you want 1 year of prosperity, grow grain. If you want 10 years of prosperity, grow trees. If you want 100 years of prosperity, grow people." The benefits are evident, yet the real question becomes, “how do you grow people?” This Big Idea Session, CRI’s Trauma Coaching and Trauma Consultation Training, answers this question. Schools, organizations, and parents are discovering that the traditional “command and control” style of working with...
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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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Healing ACEs
I am writing you this post as a past president of the Michigan Association of School Psychologists and adoptive father of two foster children with special needs. My wife, Barbara, and I have written two books concerning educating and raising abused and abandoned children. Because these books will be helpful to both parents and teachers I am posting this letter to education and parenting pages. They are: Some Way Home – A Memoir in a Myth and Crossing Infinity – Healing Our Children Ourselves...
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Held back, but not helped (hechingerreport.org)
Administrators at Carver say that students who enter high school overage feel like they’re wearing a scarlet letter, regardless of why they were retained. “There’s so much shame attached to it. Students constantly tell me, ‘I want to be at my right grade,’” said Jerel Bryant, Carver’s principal. “It’s a huge thing.” Those doubts and shame are one of the many reasons that overage students are at significant risk of dropping out of school. But in New Orleans, overage students are incredibly...
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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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How Being Part of a 'House' Within a School Helps Students Gain A Sense of Belonging (kqed.org)
Sept. 30, 2016 was a big day for Lake Canyon Elementary. Students, teachers, and staff arrived at the Galt, California, school wearing white shirts and before long were sent to stand by one of six large cardboard boxes. After a drum roll, cannons sprayed confetti over each cluster of students. The color matched one of six new banners, like the orange one reading “Sebete” and featuring a bear meant to symbolize courage. As music played, the boxes were ripped open to reveal matching T-shirts.
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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 do you tell the story of a huge early childhood program over time? [centerforhealthjournalism.org]
Thanks — for nothing, Mr. Reiner. When I started my reporting on the 20th anniversary of California’s Proposition 10 — now known as First 5 — I fully expected to have filmmaker Rob Reiner’s quotations and retrospective as a central piece of the package . After all, he was the sponsor of the ballot measure that created the tobacco tax-funded system for programs serving young children from birth to age 5. And, he welcomed me into his Beverly Hills office for an interview when the measure was...
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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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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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'I Work 3 Jobs And Donate Blood Plasma to Pay the Bills.' This Is What It’s Like to Be a Teacher in America [time.com]
Hope Brown can make $60 donating plasma from her blood cells twice in one week, and a little more if she sells some of her clothes at a consignment store. It’s usually just enough to cover an electric bill or a car payment. This financial juggling is now a part of her everyday life—something she never expected almost two decades ago when she earned a master’s degree in secondary education and became a high school history teacher. Brown often works from 5 a.m. to 4 p.m. at her school in...
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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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Inside the Elementary School Where Drug Addiction Sets the Curriculum [nytimes.com]
By Dan Levin, The New York Times, June 12, 2019. Inside an elementary school classroom decorated with colorful floor mats, art supplies and building blocks, a little boy named Riley talked quietly with a teacher about how he had watched his mother take “knockout pills” and had seen his father shoot up “a thousand times.” Riley, who is 9 years old, described how he had often been left alone to care for his baby brother while his parents were somewhere else getting high. Beginning when he was...
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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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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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Sesame Street's Traumatic Experiences Website / First 5 CA Care, Cope Connect Resource
Thanks to Alejandra Labrado from First 5 Sacramento for providing the links to these resources! Sesame Street's Traumatic Experiences: https://sesamestreetincommunities.org/topics/traumatic-experiences/ When a child endures a traumatic experience, the whole family feels the impact. But adults hold the power to help lessen its effects. Several factors can change the course of kids’ lives: feeling seen and heard by a caring adult, being patiently taught coping strategies and...
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Seven Lessons from Mister Rogers That Can Help Americans Be Neighbors Again (mindful.org)
Fred McFeely Rogers was a shy, somewhat awkward, and sometimes bullied child growing up in the 1930s. After going to college for what he called his “first language”—music—he prepared to enter seminary and study for the ministry. But on a visit home for Easter, he saw television for the first time. He hated it—people on the program were throwing pies in each other’s faces, and Fred found that demeaning. Nonetheless, he sensed instantly television’s capacity for connection and enrichment. That...
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Seven Ways to Welcome LGBTQ Families As Young People Head Back to School [HRC]
By Guest contributor, Aug 5, 2019 for the Human Rights Campaign Post submitted by Kimmie Fink, Welcoming Schools consultant As educators head back to school, it’s important to remember they will be serving not just a classroom full of new students, but also families. The Family Equality Council estimates that between 2 million and 3.7 million children under the age of 18 have an LGBTQ parent -- a group that has typically been underserved, if not sometimes ignored, in school settings. The...
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Six Ways for Educators to Avoid Compassion Fatigue (lesley.edu)
Over 34 million children in the United States under the age of 18 have experienced at least one type of serious childhood trauma, according to the National Survey for Children's Health—and the numbers may be even higher, due to category omissions such as poverty and racism. These stunning statistics are a heartbreaking reality for our children and a daily struggle for teachers. With nearly half of the children in our nation's classrooms experiencing adverse childhood events, trauma, or...
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Social-Emotional Development in Schools
Brookings: 5 reasons-to-invest-in-the-social-and-emotional-development-of-students
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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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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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State Funding: A Race to the Bottom (American Council on Education)
Many of us have experienced in the distant past, the reality that in the US if one worked hard, studied hard, did well in school, one could move up the "ladder of economic opportunity," even those of us who grew up in extreme poverty. For me personally, this reality was my hope (and my only source of resilience at the time) that I might be able to escape severe adversity, homelessness and foster care. My goal at that time, "I will never be like my parents." I was going to be someone...
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States Move to Add Native American History to Curriculum (usnews.com)
MINNEAPOLIS—ON THE heels of the National Indian Education Association's conference held in Minneapolis earlier this fall and just in time for Native American Heritage Month , the nearby Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community announced a $5 million philanthropic campaign to fund resources, curriculum, and training on Native American heritage for teachers and administrators across Minnesota , according to the Star Tribune . "We're hoping we can move the needle in the narrative in Minnesota and...
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Superkid Power Guidebook
In Southern Oregon, Janai Mestrovich, MS, Early Learning & Child Development, labels her curriculum Empowering Superkids. The focus is on pre-K and Kindergarten kids and teaching them to know her/himself and tap inner resources of mind/body/emotions/breathing and have skills to make good choices and feel like a SUPERKID. Teaching self awareness, self respect and communication/collaboration are essential towards resiliency. Janai has developed and taught the Superkid Guidebook over a 40...
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Supporting children in the struggle against COVID-19 on 3/24 (www.embracerace.org)
Excerpt from the founders of Embrace Race about the webinar tomorrow night from 8:30-9:30 pm ET (5:30-6:30 pm PST): Please go here, to register (free ) and to the E mbrace Race site for more about the organization.
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Take a deep breath: Koontz launches resiliency program to help kids cope with stress [Salisbury Post]
SALISBURY — They’re only 5, 6, 8, 10-years-old — but life has already thrown some elementary school students more punches than they can handle. Rowan County children walk into school every day with the scales stacked against them; bearing the weight of abuse, poverty or community violence — and when one more weight is added to the pile, they break. “The response could be fight or freeze, ” Christy Lockhart, a social worker at Koontz Elementary said. “ And it’s out of their control.”...
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Taking ACEs to School: Trauma-Informed Approaches in Higher Education
“What happened to you?” isn’t just a question for therapists to ask their troubled clients. It’s a question that should inform the work of physicians, nurses, lawyers, educators, social workers and public health advocates from the time they are learning their professions to each real-world encounter. That’s the hope of the Philadelphia ACE Task Force (PATF) , whose workforce development group released a toolkit to help faculty across a range of disciplines weave content on adverse childhood...
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Teaching Kids to Understand Self Regulation and Responsibility
Sample Lesson from Superkid Power Teaching Kids to Understand Self Regulation and Responsibility Key concepts from the curriculum are how to breathe deeply to stay calm and how to use that inner calm to control how to respond to whatever is going on around you. First, we teach how to take deep breaths using a 3D prop, called the breathing sphere, that expands and contracts to represent the lungs and diaphragm filling with air along with the teacher counting out the beats of...
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Thanks to One Mom, Schools Join the Farm-to-Table Movement (nationswell.com)
In New York’s Hudson Valley, farm-to-table food is no longer limited to upscale restaurants like Blue Hill Stone Barns. Because of mom Sandy McKelvey, fresh food grown on local farms is now bettering the fare in school cafeterias. The Farm-to-School movement took off in this rural, scenic region north of New York City in 2009, shortly after McKelvey and her family moved to Cold Spring Harbor. At her daughter’s new elementary school, she volunteered to introduce a new curriculum centered on a...
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The Brain and Troubled Children and Youth
Troubled kids are distinguished by their regrettable ability to elicit from others exactly the opposite of what they really need. ( L. Tobin ) Connecting with troubled students is not easy work. Many of these young people come into our classrooms and schools on a daily bases depressed, hostile, discouraged, unmotivated and angry. Underneath their sometimes outrageous and provocative behaviors these young people's lives come up way short on joy and long on despair and hopelessness. Their...
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The federal Handle with Care Act is designed to connect children who experience trauma to trauma informed school resources
Click here for the full press release: Proposed Federal Legislation: Handle with Care Act KAINE, MANCHIN, CAPITO INTRODUCE BIPARTISAN LEGISLATION TO CARE FOR CHILDREN IMPACTED BY OPIOID ABUSE Thursday, April 26, 2018 Bristol Virginia Public Schools Superintendent: this bill ‘will equip us to better achieve our vision of enabling all students to thrive’ Washington, D.C. – Yesterday, U.S. Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA), Joe Manchin (D-WV), and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) introduced the Handle with...
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Michigan Trauma Informed Education
We are working with PESI, a leader in professional development, to offer a full day training in trauma informed education. This content follows the content of our book on Supporting and Educating Traumatized Students. We will be in Michigan April 19, (Sterling Heights) 20, (LIvonia) and 21 (Ann Arbor) See the attached brochure If this goes well they will continue to offer this next year. Hope to see you there
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Mindfulness and Meditation to Become Part of the Curriculum in 370 Schools in England (brightvibes.com)
In 370 schools across England, children will be taught how to meditate, techniques for muscle relaxation, and breathing exercises for mindfulness. The program is being conducted under a mental health study that the British government is running up until 2021. Aside from the increasing number of young children that are showing signs of early onset depression and anxiety , National Health Service (NHS) reports have also indicated that 1-in-8 British children have mental disorders. Despite...
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MindUP UK [4 min]
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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 Grant Lends Helping Hand [thelumberjack.org]
By Jerame Saunders, The Lumberjack, December 12, 2019 A new $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education will be placing Masters of Social Work students at Humboldt State University in Eureka City Schools and Del Norte County schools as stipend workers. “The grants themselves are funding positions at Eureka City Schools and also the Del Norte Unified School District,” Director of Field Education at HSU’s Department of Social Work Yvonne Doble said. “It’s actually a full time...
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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 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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New snapshots of school district achievement, drop-outs and discipline [California -- EdSource.org]
If you’ve got some time on you r hands and a yearning for school district data, check out a new tool announced Monday by the California Department of Education that tracks how well districts and schools have done from 2012 to 2014...
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No More 'At-Risk' Students in California [insidehighered.com]
By Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed, November 5, 2019 A decades-long effort to change how educators talk about students facing economic or social challenges has been backed by California lawmakers. A bill to remove references to “at-risk youth” and replace the term with “at-promise youth” in California’s Education Code and Penal Code was approved by California governor Gavin Newsom in mid-October. The California Education Code is a collection of laws primarily applying to public K-12...
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Non-White School Districts Get $23 Billion Less Funding than White Ones [psmag.com]
In the United States today approximately 12.8 million students—or 27 percent of all those in school—attend school in a district in which over 75 percent of students are non-white. In a new report , researchers at EdBuild , a non-profit that analyzes school-funding issues, calculate that these students are getting dramatically shortchanged on the school-funding front. The majority of racially concentrated, non-white districts are also low-income. Poor, non-white districts educate about 20...
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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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Nursing Summit on ACES - April 12 in New York State (Incl. School Nurses)
This full-day program is presented by the Catskill Hudson Area Health Education Center's Nursing Workforce Development Workgroup in coordination with leadership of State University of New York - Delhi School of Nursing. The purpose of this program is to provide an educational forum for practicing nurses and school nurses to discuss Adverse Childhood Experiences and the potential effects they can contribute to long-term, adverse health-related issues. The NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing...