Tagged With "social emotional learning"
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How do these pediatricians do ACEs screening? Early adopters tell all.
Last week, three pediatricians — with a combined experience of 15 years integrating ACEs science into their practices — reflected on the urgency they felt several years ago that prompted them to begin screening patients for childhood adversity and resilience when there was practically no guidance at all. Along their journey , they accumulated a list of lessons learned for other pediatricians and family clinics to use. The three pediatricians participated in the ACEs Connection webinar,...
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How Facial Expressions of Adults Affect Children
Karen Murphy, who is principal at Free Orchards Elementary School where I work, is a champion of trauma awareness and is working hard to lead our school in the direction of trauma sensitive practices -and away from the policies & procedures that have historically made well-intentioned school districts part of the "pipeline to prison". One of her sayings is "fix yer face", which means simply to put a warm expression on your face, consciously and regularly.
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How It Feels & How We Heal: Parenting with ACEs Chat Quotes (You Tube, Database, PDFs, Links)
Parenting with ACEs is sharing inspiration, information, and expertise from our chat series in 3 formats. Parenting with ACEs: How It Feels & How We Heal Quote Collection (pdf version below as well) Quotes Database (pdf version below as well) Links to Chat Transcripts and before and after-the-chat blog posts. Thanks to everyone who showed up, who shared, and who is doing the important work that is our mission (prevent ACEs, heal trauma, build resilience). We know that work happens...
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How kids learn resilience [theatlantic.com]
In 2013, for the first time, a majority of public-school students in this country—51 percent, to be precise—fell below the federal government’s low-income cutoff, meaning they were eligible for a free or subsidized school lunch. It was a powerful symbolic moment—an inescapable reminder that the challenge of teaching low-income children has become the central issue in American education. The truth, as many American teachers know firsthand, is that low-income children can be harder to educate...
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How Leaders Can Shift Mindsets and Create a Trauma-Informed Student Support Form (ascd.org)
Discover the ways trauma-informed practices, social emotional learning, and positive behavioral interventions and supports complement one another. School leaders will learn how to shift current PBIS practices to reflect a trauma-informed mindset and best support students. Identify ways to adjust referral forms and access our ready-to-use, trauma-informed Student Support Form. Download free white paper | PDF from ASCD Whitepaper Library Click HERE for the white paper on MoveThisWorld's website.
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How Making Kindness a Priority Benefits Students (ww2.kqed.org)
In a 2014 Harvard study of 10,000 middle and high school kids, 80 percent of the students said they value achievement and happiness over caring for others. While 96 percent of parents report that they want above all for their children to be caring, 81 percent of kids said they believe their parents value achievement and happiness more. A similar math holds for students and teachers: 62 percent of kids believe their teachers prize academic success above all. And this thinking affects student...
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How Making Time for Mindfulness Helps Students (kqed.org)
A new study suggests that mindfulness education — lessons on techniques to calm the mind and body — can reduce the negative effects of stress and increase students’ ability to stay engaged, helping them stay on track academically and avoid behavior problems. After finding that students who self-reported mindful habits performed better on tests and had higher grades, researchers with the Boston Charter Research Collaborative — a partnership between the Center for Education Policy Research at...
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How Severe, Ongoing Stress can Affect a Child's Brain [Associated Press via kstp.com]
A quiet, unsmiling little girl with big brown eyes crawls inside a carpeted cubicle, hugs a stuffed teddy bear tight, and turns her head away from the noisy classroom. The safe spaces, quiet times and breathing exercises for her and the other preschoolers at the Verner Center for Early Learning are designed to help kids cope with intense stress so they can learn. But experts hope there's an even bigger benefit — protecting young bodies and brains from stress so persistent that it becomes...
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How Teachers Learn to Discuss Racism (theatlantic.com)
With a profession that’s characteristically white, female , and middle class—and with students of color and children in poverty rapidly making up the majority of the public-school population—teachers equipped and willing to talk about race and racism has become a necessity. The mere mention of these topics can be awkward and difficult, yet various research findings point to the need to confront the discomfort to improve student learning . Increasingly, that duty has fallen to urban-education...
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How These Teenagers Changed the Course of a Life (3-minutes uplift.tv)
What would you do if someone you cared about was being forced to give up their dreams? Learn how these girls, at just 14-years-old, saved their friend from a child marriage. Rumi and her friends are among 20, 000 people across Bangladesh trained in the Hunger Project’s Safe School For Girls program. The program equips girls with the tools & courage to stop child marriage & stand up for their rights. Stand with Rumi. Invest in women and girls. A film by The Hunger Project To view the...
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How To Apply The Brain Science Of Resilience To The Classroom (npr.org)
Chronic stress and uncertainty, not to mention missed meals and restless nights, make it physically and mentally difficult for children to concentrate or form trusting bonds with adults. They become hypervigilant, prone to emotional meltdowns, with bodies thrown into fight-or-flight mode at the slightest disturbance. "There's a body of knowledge that is not a hypothesis, it's a fact," says Dr. Pamela Cantor, the founder of Turnaround for Children. "Adversity alters how children develop as...
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How to Help 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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How To Make A Civics Education Stick [npr.org]
How do you teach kids to be active participants in government? Or to tell the difference between real news and fake news? In their last legislative sessions, 27 states considered bills or other proposals that aim to answer these questions. Many of those proposals are rooted in popular ideas about the best ways to teach civics, including when kids should start, what they should learn and how to apply those lessons. Here's a look at some of those concepts. Start when they're young, go into...
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I’m a principal who thinks personalized learning shouldn’t be a debate. (chalkbeat.org)
We are among hundreds of Chicago educators who would welcome critics to visit one of the 120 city schools implementing new models for learning – with and without technology. Because, as it turns out, Chicago is fast becoming a hub for personalized learning. And, it is no coincidence that our academic growth rates are also among the highest in the nation. Before personalized learning, we designed our classrooms around the educator. Decisions were made based on how educators preferred to...
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Imagine Online School in a Language You Don’t Understand [newyorktimes.com]
"The parents of millions of American schoolchildren are not fluent in English, presenting an extra challenge to learning at home." [newyorktimes.com]
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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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In Our Connected World, What If Empathy Is Learning? (kqed.org)
Information is everywhere, making it impossible to package. Collaboration and networking underpin life, and constant communication is the norm, even for plants . Each time you check your smart phone you tap into a global brain. And when you finally put down the phone, you shake your head: So much going on . In fact, the tightening weave in the global network means that never has there been an era in human history in which so many people learn together. What will replace the old model? There...
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In this California classroom, students teach each other their home languages — and learn acceptance [edsource.org]
In Acacia WoodsChan’s ethnic studies class at Castlemont High School in Oakland, California, students chat with each other in Spanish, Arabic and Mam, a Mayan language from Guatemala. The students have only been in the U.S. for a few weeks or months. Some are from Yemen and many are from countries in Central America — Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Last year, WoodsChan became concerned when she started hearing the Spanish-speaking students laugh when their classmates spoke Mam or...
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Innovative School Program Seeks to Understand and Help Students Overcome Childhood Trauma [News.MPBN.net]
Studies have documented the connection between childhood trauma, and chronic disease and mental illness later in life. Some public schools in Maine are paying more attention to the impacts these experiences can have on student success. These schools are helping students identify — and cope with — the stressors that are effecting their lives. Waterville High School teacher Sherry Brown sees her students differently than she did several years ago. That's when she first learned about "adverse...
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Instead of Punishment, This School Teaches Mindfulness and Yoga — With Stunning Results (wakeup-world.com)
Robert W. Coleman Elementary School in Baltimore, United States, doesn’t have a detention room or an active punishment policy for disruptive kids. Instead, there is a Mindful Moment room, where students are encouraged to participate breathing practices or meditation to “ calm down and re-center .” They are also given the opportunity to talk through what happened with specially trained aides. Created in partnership with the Holistic Life Foundation , a local nonprofit organization that...
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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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Introducing myself, Morgan Vien & NEW Practicing Resilience Community
Hello! I’m a Community Manager for the Practicing Resilience for Self-Care & Healing community. This is an introduction to me and this new community. I graduated with a B.S. in Public Health from Santa Clara University June 2017. And I’m interested in preventing chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, at the community and population level by addressing biological, psychological, and social factors that affect chronic disease outcomes. As the...
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Schools combine meditation and brain science to help combat discipline problems (chalkbeat.org)
When students and teachers learn together about how their brains influence behavior, one expert says, discipline can become less of a confrontation and more of a partnership. The field of educational neuroscience is at the intersection of cognitive psychology, education and neuroscience, and some of its teachings suggest findings from brain research can be applied to classroom management and discipline techniques. Some trend toward the area of “mindfulness,” such as attempting to sharpen...
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Schools Should Recognize Trauma as a Disability, Compton Lawsuit Says [KQED.org]
A group of middle and high school students in Compton have filed a first-of-its-kind federal lawsuit saying violence at home and in their neighborhoods has impaired their ability to learn at school. The students, along with three teachers who are also plaintiffs, allege the Compton Unified School District has failed to recognize and address their trauma-induced disabilities, and therefore has denied their legal right to an equal education. ....You have to address trauma in order to do...
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Schools Spotlight Social, Emotional Learning Amid Complex Times [fosters.com]
By Hadley Barndollar, Fosters.com, October 20, 2019 In a second-grade classroom at New Franklin Elementary School, a warm flurry of compliments. Seated in a circle, girls praise each other’s dresses and sweatshirts. A boy gives his friend kudos for helping him clean up after an activity the previous week. They all murmur the teacher-advised response — “thank you” — through toothy smiles. It’s a lesson on compliments. Down the hallway, in a first-grade circle, students talk about inclusion...
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Schools Spotlight Social, Emotional Learning Amid Complex Times [fosters.com]
By Hadley Barndollar, Fosters.com, October 20, 2019 In a second-grade classroom at New Franklin Elementary School, a warm flurry of compliments. Seated in a circle, girls praise each other’s dresses and sweatshirts. A boy gives his friend kudos for helping him clean up after an activity the previous week. They all murmur the teacher-advised response — “thank you” — through toothy smiles. It’s a lesson on compliments. Down the hallway, in a first-grade circle, students talk about inclusion...
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Screening Mental Health In Kindergarten Is Way Too Late, Experts Say [NPR.org]
When it comes to children's brains, Rahil Briggs describes them as ... sticky. "Whatever we throw, [it] sticks. That's why they can learn Spanish in six months when it takes us six years," says the New York City based child psychologist, "but also why if they're exposed to community violence, or domestic violence, it really sticks." Briggs works at the Healthy Steps program at the Montefiore Comprehensive Health Care Center in the South Bronx, screening children as young as 6 months for...
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Seeking Development Manager in Houston, Texas
FuelEd is a non-profit whose mission is to develop emotionally intelligent educators who develop relationship-driven schools. We are seeking a dynamic Development Manager who is interested in playing a role in improving teaching and learning in our schools. The ideal candidate is excited to engage in a variety of fundraising activities including grant writing, prospect research, and communications. They thrive in a fast-paced environment and want to be a founding member and leading...
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Seeking Workshop Presenters for 2020 Conference for Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools
Do you have specialized expertise in trauma-informed care and education? Has your school taken the journal toward becoming trauma-sensitive ? The Attachment & Trauma Network (ATN) is looking for workshop presenters from a variety of backgrounds: educators (at all levels), counselors, social workers, clinicians, community leaders and others to present at our 2020 conference, February 16-18, 2020 in Atlanta, GA. You will be speaking at the LARGEST gathering of trauma-informed educators in...
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Self- Regulation Begins with Dogs, Tense Knots and Calm Socks
Self-Regulation Begins with Dogs, Tense Knots and Calm Socks Originally posted to ORAEYC, February 19, 2019 | Janai Mestrovich, M.S. We were all barking like dogs that were upset on all fours in the preK classroom. Then I used the Breathing Sphere to guide 20 preK children to take slow, deep belly button breaths to release the mad dog tension. As we all slowly exhaled and released the tight knots of tension, we were able to become calm dogs. The sounds of tense mad dogs had filled the room...
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Sesame Street Resources for Families Coping After Natural Disasters
In the aftermath of recent hurricanes and wildfires, the Sesame Street in Communities team wanted to reach out to provide information on our available resources to help families cope in the aftermath of natural disasters, and other traumatic experiences. Bilingual videos, articles, printables and more, are all available for free on our website at www.sesamestreetincommunities.org . Here are the links to a few topic pages that may be most useful to you as you work with families in the...
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Setting School Culture With Social And Emotional Learning Routines (kqed.org)
In recent years, the pendulum of education trends have swung back to emphasize the importance of relationships to learning. Schools are using social and emotional learning curricula to help students develop interpersonal skills and learn ways to solve problems peacefully . But there's still debate around which social and emotional skills are the most important to teach -- such as empathy, e xecutive functioning or persistence -- and some educators feel unprepared to take on a role that seems...
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Setting the Wheels in Motion - Becoming a Trauma Informed and Trauma Sensitive School
I recently wrote a blog post about how to take the first step in creating a trauma informed care model (TIC) in your school. The first step, Establishing a Baseline, is necessary because it fuels future steps in the process. In the blog post "Is Your School Ready to be Trauma Informed and Trauma Sensitive," I also listed the key components of a TIC model. I am adding them here as well, because I don't want you to have to keep going back to the other blog as you are working on this process.
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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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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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Snohomish County teachers studying impacts of trauma [heraldnet.com]
EVERETT — As you learn to look at something in a different light, it can change the choices you make. When children get into trouble at school, sometimes the root cause is trauma and toxic stress they have experienced outside the classroom doors. If the people who provide care for them — including teachers, principals and social workers — know how to recognize and address that trauma, they can do a better job. They can try to make sure it doesn’t keep the child from growing academically,...
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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 Charter tackles social-emotional wellbeing
As you walk through the courtyard of the Sonoma (California) Charter School (SCS) sounds of stomping feet, clapping hands, and children’s voices singing “round and round” and “shake shake” pour from the performing arts space called the Playbox. Inside, 10 first-graders wearing silk tunics, holding brightly colored fabric pieces , wriggle on the floor like worms, jumping like kangaroos, then gently throw feathers from an imaginary bird in the air. You’ve stepped into the world of...
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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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SPLC's Teaching Tolerance Project: Social Justice Standards
I hope everyone is staying safe and sane during this heat wave! I wanted to share with you a tool that I came across from the Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Tolerance Project (if you have not had a chance to subscribe to their weekly newsletter , please do! It has a wealth of wonderful information that intersects with Resilience / Trauma Informed work) They also have a bunch of great free webinars ! Teaching Tolerance’s Social Justice Standards "Social Justice Standards: The Teaching...
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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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State-of-the-art education software often doesn’t help students learn more, study finds [HeschingerReport.com]
[Image by Krzysztof Pacholak ] Even proponents of educational technology admit that a lot of software sold to schools isn’t very good. But they often highlight the promise of so-called “adaptive learning” software, in which complex algorithms react to how a student answers questions, and tailor instruction to each student. The computer recommends different lessons to different students, based upon what they already know and what they still need to work on. Wonderful in theory, but does it...
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Strategies To Foster A Sense Of Belonging In Your Classroom (kqed.org)
When students feel they belong at school they also feel respected and ready to learn. That's why teachers work so hard to create a class environment where every student feels able to contribute and be heard. "As human beings, one of the most essential needs we have is the need to belong," said Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, President and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute in an Edutopia video series on the science of learning. "When that sense of belonging is there, children throw themselves...
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Stretching against stress: Auburn students find balance through yoga class (auburnpub.com)
While other students in Auburn Junior High School have been bound to their desks Tuesday afternoons this school year, Kristi Newton's health class has been doing yoga. The yoga provides physical exercise but the purpose of the class goes beyond that. Newton began using yoga as a way to cope with the unexpected death of her brother-in-law, Peter Thomson, around four years ago. She eventually thought that since yoga helped her get through her loss, it might be able to help her students deal...
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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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Student’s resilience in family crisis leads to college dream [Herald Tribune]
My first year of college went by so fast. It’s hard to believe it’s already over. When I was in high school, it would have been harder to believe anyone who told me that I would be living my dream of attending college and having my own room on a gorgeous campus that feels like home. I was determined to go to college, but in high school my family situation threatened all my plans. After my father went to prison and my mother’s mental illness became more severe, I took responsibility for my...
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Students Aren’t Learning About Slavery (usnews.com)
When it comes to the history of slavery in the U.S., the central role it played in shaping the country and its continued impact on race relations, students don't know much. In fact, only 8 percent of high school seniors can identify slavery as the central cause of the Civil War, according to a report released Thursday by the Southern Poverty Law Center . "It's important that everyone understand that slavery is truly at the foundation and formation of this nation," Hasan Kwame Jeffries,...
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Students at the Sandhills School experience the power of yoga for learning (wistv.com)
Many of us take the ability to read for granted. Because for those with dyslexia or another learning disorder, the struggle to read can be frustrating and create chaos in the classroom. The Sandhills School in Columbia is flipping the script and the entire learning environment. The school is reimagining learning through the power of sporadic movement during the day. Rather than cutting recess and making kids sit and try harder, they are incorporating specific movement to help them focus and...
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Students Fill A Gap In Mental Health Care For Immigrants (npr.org)
(Image Credit: Gary Waters/Ikon Images/Getty Images ) Patricia Becerril comes to Bethesda Health Center in Charlotte, N.C., every other week . Becerril initially came to this free clinic for diabetes treatment. Director Wendy Pascual says primary care is often the starting point for patients here, most of whom are immigrants. "One thing we have been seeing year after year is that many patients came here with physical problems that really are mental health problems," Pascual says. Meanwhile,...