Tagged With "Bad Kids"
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Middle school tackles everybody's trauma; result is calmer, happier kids, teachers and big drop in suspensions
6 th grader Cayla White (right) helps lead class meditation with Niroga Institute’s Lauren Banister/ photos by Laurie Udesky During the 2014/2015 school year, things were looking grim at Park Middle School in Antioch, CA. At the time, staff couldn’t corral student disruptions. Teacher morale was plummeting. By the end of February 2015, 192 kids of the 997 students had been suspended -- 19.2 percent of the student population. “I was watching really good people burning out from the [teaching]...
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A second-grade teacher's unique homework policy is going viral. (upworthy.com)
Brandy Young kicked off the new school year with a note for her kids to pass on to their parents. When it made its way to social media, it quickly went viral: Her note struck a powerful chord with parents everywhere . So far, it's been shared nearly 70,000 times by moms and dads who are tired of playing "homework police" or just want a little more quality time with their kids at night. Brandy Young is right: The research on the effectiveness of homework is a mixed bag , especially for kids...
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ACE-Aha Moments & Parenting: Meet Aprel Phelps Downey
Aprel Phelps Downey What was your ACEs Aha moment? When did you first hear about ACEs and what impact did/does it have on you? How do ACEs impact you as a parent? How is your parenting impacted by past trauma? What’s been most helpful to you as a parent parenting with ACEs? What’s been most challenging for you as a parent parenting with ACEs? What has parenting taught you? What have you learned? How do you manage complex family relationships? What inspires/encourages and helps you? I know...
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Articles about trauma-informed schools
Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA, tries new approach to school discipline—suspensions drop 85% 2012 http://acestoohigh.com/2012/04...-expulsions-drop-85/ Massachusetts, Washington lead U.S. trauma-sensitive school movement 2012...
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Against the Tide
“I don’t know if I can do this anymore, Kris. I am just so discouraged.” I sit with my dear friend on a sticky summer night trying to get my gut right. “Gut wrench” is an apt description. It’s invaded my body and overwhelmed my mind. I can’t think straight, see straight, see a way out. The darkness pervading her porch has met my inner ache and it’s threatening to overwhelm my composure. I am choking back a watershed of tears as I open my mouth to speak. I am trying to conjure the words to...
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Announcing: New Trauma-Sensitive Schools Book
I’m delighted to share that my new book Building Trauma-Sensitive Schools: Your Guide to Creating Safe, Supportive Learning Environments for All Students will be released in early 2019 and is now available for pre-order from Brookes Publishing. This book is really about one word — hope. It’s about cultivating hope for all students, including the many who have been affected by childhood trauma. And, it’s also about kindling hope for educators who want to make a positive difference but may...
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Poet Linda McCarriston Reads “Hotel Nights With My Mother” (www.billmoyers.com/vimeo) & Note
I used to hate summers and holidays as a kid because it meant too much time at home and too much time, unstructured, with people who weren't safe. For me, that was my biological father, my first step-father and two step-siblings and I didn't hate long breaks and time away from school. I loved September and when Christmas break was over. This isn't a post about what happened to me as a kid. It's a reminder for teachers that home can be hard and what you do, allow, see and witness, even...
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Privileged Thinking in Education Course Offered for Staff at Learn4Life
Teachers and staff at several northern Los Angeles County Learn4Life Resource Centers recently completed a Professional Development (PD) titled “Privileged Thinking in Education”. At this PD, staff learned that privileged thinking is defined as an imbalance of power, experience, and access to resources that influence our opinions on the actions of others. They also watched an eye-opening video , which showed how much privilege some have, without even realizing it. The staff also analyzed how...
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Program offers hundreds of young men, boys safe space to heal from ACEs
Dennis McCollins recounts some of the experiences that caused him to harden against the world as a teenager. “There were times I went to more funerals than birthdays,” says McCollins, who is the clinical director of the School Based Health Center at Greenwood Academy in Richmond, Calif. And it took its toll: “I spent time homeless. I got expelled [from school]. I was so angry and upset and mad,” he says. Dennis McCollins Then a man that he met when he was sent to Job Corps as a teen turned...
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Compassion-Based Strategies for Managing Classroom Behavior (kqed.org)
When Grace Dearborn started her career teaching high school students, she felt confident about how to teach but unprepared for managing behavior in her classroom. During more challenging disciplinary moments with students, she used her angry voice with them, thinking that would work. Instead, on one occasion, an escalated situation led to a student following her around the classroom for 15 minutes while she was teaching until security could come to escort the student out of the class .
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Development and Implementation of Standards for Social and Emotional Learning in the 50 States (selpractices.org)
Development and Implementation of Standards for Social and Emotional Learning in the 50 States · SEL Thrive { "@context" : "http://schema.org", "@type" : "Organization", "name" : "SEL Thrive", "url" : "https://www.selpractices.org/", "logo": "https://www.selpractices.org/apple-touch-icon-180x180.png", "sameAs" : [ "https://www.facebook.com/", "https://twitter.com/" ], // "contactPoint" : [{ // "@type" : "ContactPoint", // "telephone" : "+1-555-555-555", // "contactType" : "customer service"...
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Dr. Ross Greene, Educated & Kids Who Have Been Traumatized
The Educating Traumatized Children Summit had Ross Greene, Ph.D. as the keynote. He was interviewed by Julie Beem of the Attachment Trauma Network (ATN). Dr. Greene is the author of The Explosive Child and Lost at School, Lost & Found and Raising Human Beings . He's the originator of the Collaborative and Pro-Active Solutions (CPS) model . I’d heard his name from some of the teachers in my life, but I’d never heard him speak. I’ve summarized, paraphrased and quoted a few of the things he...
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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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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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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 Daily Farm Work and Outdoor Projects Make Learning in High School Better for Teens (kqed.org)
Called the Telstar Freshman Academy, or TFA, it involves all its district’s ninth graders in a hands-on learning method that uses outdoor-based projects and community-building activities as ways to teach across several disciplines. The program is aimed at helping students feel connected to each other and their community in a place where — as in so many rural areas hit hard by the opioid epidemic and the 2008 recession — connectedness and a shared sense of purpose have been in short supply.
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How Do American Kids Become Murderers?
https://www.local10.com/news/m...ns_20151127193144631 Has murder become the norm in our society? Every day, you turn on the news to see who else got killed. I had to disconnect my cable TV because I just got so sick and tired of watching homicide news every day and see no change in our country's policies. No kid is born to become a murderer. Yet, our society somehow does a great job turning them into monsters. How? Liberty and freedom for all! Oh, really? Then why is the U.S. incarceration...
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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 to Help Students Dealing with Adversity [greatergood.berkeley.edu]
Six-year-old Jada feels a persistent expectation of danger. She overreacts to provocative situations and has difficulty managing her emotions, which often flare up without warning. To her teachers, Jada appears touchy, temperamental, and aggressive. She is easily frustrated, which makes her susceptible to bullying. When something happens at school that triggers Jada, she may lash out in fury. How can teachers manage a kid like Jada who may have suffered trauma, but whose emotional reactions...
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TEACHER VOICE: Breaking the school-to-prison pipeline with ‘windows and mirrors’ for black boys [hechingerreport.org]
The connection I’m building with my students starts every day with a box of Cocoa Puffs. Name-brand cereal may not sound all that special, but it’s something most of my students can’t afford. It’s something I remember longing for when I was a kid. Even though our school serves breakfast in the classroom to all students, I bring a group of boys from our K-4 school together for a special breakfast to fuel their day with a dose of self-esteem. We eat and we talk, and they get to start their day...
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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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Teaching self awareness and stress recognition to kids age 4-6
Janai Mestrovich (BS/MS, Family & Child Development), teacher and developer of 'Superkid Power' (Ashland, OR) passed this along to me regarding how she uses finger activated mood card to measure temperature and kid stress levels: 40 Pre-K children learned how to measure their stress level this morning by measuring hand temp. with mood cards. Blue, happy-peaceful-very calm; Green, calm; Red, tight muscles/upset; Black Tense/grit teeth. We chanted and drummed appropriately - tense drumming...
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The Absence of Punishment in Our Schools
Where to begin... My heart is full of hope and joy as I watch the trauma-informed schools movement swell across our nation and planet. The science of ACEs is mind-bending to say the least and we are now able to open up a much deeper dialogue about human behavior and health. Ultimately this work is about healing… All. Of. Us. A new consciousness is taking root around ending the “us vs them” construct. The idea is growing that we’re all on this journey together and that no matter where our...
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The Digital Gap Between Rich and Poor Kids Is Not What We Expected [nytimes.com]
The parents in Overland Park, Kan., were fed up. They wanted their children off screens, but they needed strength in numbers. First, because no one wants their kid to be the lone weird one without a phone. And second, because taking the phone away from a middle schooler is actually very, very tough. “We start the meetings by saying, ‘This is hard, we’re in a new frontier, but who is going to help us?’” said Krista Boan, who is leading a Kansas City-based program called START, which stands...
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Nine Simple Trauma-Informed Gestures for Educators
The promotion of trauma-sensitive and trauma-informed schools has grown tremendously in education. Broadly speaking, trauma-informed schools maintain a framework whereby the entire school staff maintains awareness of the impacts of toxic stress and trauma, and strive to ensure that all students feel safe, supported, and connected. Such awareness and motivation among educators and caregivers to promote such a framework presents multiple opportunities to change the lives of students and help...
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Building a Resilient Community (United Way of East Central Iowa)
ACES: Building a Resilient Community Childhood trauma has affected the majority of people in our community. Specific family problems as well as child abuse and neglect (summarized as Adverse Childhood Experience, or ACEs) have been shown...
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Chico school district using new approach to deal with behavioral issues [ChicoER.com]
Chico Unified School District is taking a different approach to behavioral problems in the classroom by training its staff to recognize students who have experienced trauma using the “trauma-informed” approach. In a traditional setting, if a student is acting out or not paying attention, a teacher might reprimand the student, or in some cases address them sharply, Chico Unified director of secondary education David McKay said. Using the trauma-informed approach, a teacher will...
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Jubilee Leadership Academy: Using ACEs Science to Transform School Culture
Students at JLA are reminded that change starts with themselves In 2004, after nearly a decade as program director at Jubilee Leadership Academy (JLA), a Christian alternative boarding school for troubled boys ages 13-18 in Prescott, WA, Rick Griffin decided to take a job in Phoenix, AZ, to work with adults with developmental disabilities. There, he began to see similarities between the issues they were having and what he saw in the kids at JLA. “There was a cognitive reason these adults I...
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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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Kids From Trauma NEED Someone to Tell Them Their Normal Isn’t “Normal” [blogs.psychcentral.com]
Laura's note: As the first paragraph of the following blog post excerpt implies, a lot of adults need someone to tell them their "normal" isn't "normal" too. If it's all you've ever known and you're surrounded by friends and family who've had similarly unhealthy early experiences, how would you know otherwise? It took me a quarter of a century (literally) to realize that I experienced trauma throughout certain points in my childhood. It took me another year to realize that my behaviors were...
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The Regulated Classroom Goes to California
Have you ever had the experience of becoming the living embodiment of an illustrated children’s book character? Yeah, that’s happened to me. I am Froggy. The Froggy that goes to school Froggy. In the children’s story, Froggy feels anxious about his first day of school. His healthy and natural nervousness (the body’s stress response system is activated by novelty) manifests in his dream. In his dream, he misses the bus and shows up to class in his underwear. I am feeling “Froggy.” Two...
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This bullied teen's app helps kids find lunch buddies (msn.com)
As 16 year old Natalie Hampton knows firsthand, no kid deserves to sit alone at lunch. To view the 1.18 minute video clip on Pop Sugar, please click here.
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This school replaced detention with meditation. The results are stunning. (upworthy.com)
Imagine you're working at a school and one of the kids starts to act up. What would you do? T raditionally, the answer would be to give the unruly kid detention or suspension . But in my memory, detention tended to involve staring at walls, bored out of my mind, trying to either surreptitiously talk to the kids around me without getting caught or trying to read a book. If it was designed to make me think about my actions, it didn't really work. It just made everything feel stupid and unfair.
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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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Resource List - Activities & Tools
This is a list of activities and tools for children K-12. 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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Resource list - Articles on ACEs/trauma-informed schools
Articles about how schools integrate trauma-informed practices, and the outcomes of doing so. If you recommend any others besides those listed here, please leave a comment with a link and/or information.
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Running Away Or Skipping School Could Get A Kid Locked Up. Now That's Changing [npr.org]
By Cheryl Corley, National Public Radio, August 5, 2019 In Kentucky, running away from home or constantly skipping school could get a kid locked up in a juvenile hall for days. Those acts, called status offenses, aren't serious crimes, but for years Kentucky and other states treated them as though they were. That first brush with the juvenile justice system can often lead to more trouble if authorities focus on punishment, not the underlying reasons for the bad behavior. But there's growing...
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Re: Failing Schools or Failing Paradigm ?
Thank you Daun for this insider's summary regarding the elephant in the room named TRAUMA. I have made the comment that really the public school is the largest social service agency we've got but nobody but me views it that way (I guess that sounds like a bleeding heart liberal). The remedies seem overwhelming, but your emphasis on an environment of safety instilled by training the adults make sense. As a mental health professional who has had some experience working in public schools, I...
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Re: Hurtful Words: Association of Exposure to Peer Verbal Abuse With Elevated Psychiatric Symptom Scores and Corpus Callosum Abnormalities Martin H. Teicher, MD et. al.
Thank you for posting this. I am working with a company who specializes in preparing teachers to help prevent digital aggression as well as share strategies with students directly on how to support those targeted or victimized through online aggression. This article reference is timely and was on my "to do" list of items to include in the online course that is in a design phase right now. I could not agree more about the "stick and stones" sentiment and much of what we're finding in schools...
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Re: How are schools incorporating trauma informed practices, if they are at all?
This is a fascinating discussion! Here are some stories I did about trauma-informed schools in Spokane and San Francisco that might provide more information about school-wide approaches. These stories are part of a series about schools that are taking a compassionate approach to school discipline. Later this year, I'll do a story about what a school and district need to have the most success, in terms of reductions in referrals, suspensions, expulsions, absenteeism, and an increase in...
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Toxic Schools Worsening Toxic Stress: The Destructive Reign of Universal Standards, Pathology, Medication and Behaviorism
This post is the first chapter of a book. The names HAVE NOT been changed, as each individual profoundly impacted the author's growth and development. She wants their identities to remain intact. I did not realize that my first years in public education would profoundly shape my trauma-informed journey and what I would do nearly twenty years later. But I clearly remember the late fall of 2001. I was completing my second year in a master’s program for school counseling at the University of...
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Trauma can make it hard for kids to learn. Here’s how teachers learn to deal with that. (chalkbeat.org)
There’s no debating that childhood trauma seriously impacts how students learn. Researchers have tied stressful events such as divorces, deportations , neglect, sexual abuse and gun violence to behavioral problems, lower math and reading scores, and poor health. The latest research, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison , finds that children who endure severe stress are more likely to suffer heart attacks and mental health disorders. So, we know trauma affects kids, but how do we teach...
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Trauma education and mindfulness help youth living amid gun violence
Armon Hurst, 2nd from left, first row, Teens on Target, courtesy of YouthAlive! Eighteen-year-old Armon Hurst serves as vice president of the student body at Castlemont High School in Oakland, Calif. He has a 4.0 grade point average, is an avid baseball player, and is slated to go to college next year. But until a few years ago, Hurst would find himself waking from nightmares in the middle of the night. It was difficult to concentrate at school, and he wasn’t eating well. Armon Hurst “There...
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"TRAUMA SENSITIVE" CARE IN SCHOOLS Pt. 1
“ Troubled children with histories of abuse and neglect who show up in clinics, schools, hospitals, and police stations, the traumatic roots of their behaviors are less obvious, particularly because they rarely talk about being hit, abandoned, or molested, even when asked. Eighty two (82%) of the traumatized children seen in the National Child Traumatic Stress Network do not meet the criteria for PTSD. Because often they are shut down, suspicious, or aggressive they now receive...
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Washington, DC, City Council Education Committee probes how trauma-informed schools can help students
Two-and-a-half years ago, a school administrator confronted District of Columbia Councilmember David Grosso with a stark and surprising reality when he visited the Walker-Jones Education Campus to learn about a literacy intervention program. At the...
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We're Constantly Checking on Students, But What About the Teachers? [boredteachers.com]
[Daun Kauffman photo.] ____________________________________________________________ This morning, I thought about taking a sick day—a mental health day. Yesterday was a rough day in the classroom, a day that ended with a parent-teacher conference after school hours. It was a day that I laid my head on my desk during my planning period and resorted to my hidden candy stash in my bottom desk drawer. This morning, I thought, “I’ll take my first sick day.” I’d been saving them for months, coming...
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Webinar blog: Trauma-informed schools, a conversation with Jim Sporleder
“The most striking thing I heard was that when kids were highly escalated in the lower part of their brain, they physiologically can’t learn or take in new knowledge and problem-solve,” Sporleder recounted to participants in “Trauma-informed Schools: A conversation with Jim Sporleder”, an ACEs Connection webinar held on Nov. 19, 2018.
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Webinar blog: Trauma-informed schools, a conversation with Jim Sporleder
“The most striking thing I heard was that when kids were highly escalated in the lower part of their brain, they physiologically can’t learn or take in new knowledge and problem-solve,” Sporleder recounted to participants in “Trauma-informed Schools: A conversation with Jim Sporleder”, an ACEs Connection webinar held on Nov. 19, 2018.
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What Every Student Needs This "Back to School" Season: A Felt Sense of Safety
Having been an educator much of my life and attended a lot of school, there is something powerful in my somatic memory about this time of year. It’s a swirling dervish of anticipation, hope... fear, trepidation. It all collides tightly in my belly. I recall the many years of being up early on the first day of school, staring at my toast and jam as nausea rolled through me like short waves - cresting and breaking. I remember standing at the bus stop with my hair parted strictly down the...