Tagged With "social emotional learning"
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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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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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Syrian children to be taught Turkish at schools: Trauma-Informed Schools Initiative
September 18 2019 I n 2017, the Istanbul-based organization Maya Foundation (“Maya Vakfı” in Turkish), in collaboration with the Education Ministry, launched the Trauma-Informed Schools project, in an aim to help children and train teachers to spots the signs of trauma and learn how to help those affected. As part of the project, so far, 1,055 teachers across 20 schools in Turkey have received training.... Many teachers were quoted as saying by the report that after receiving the relevant...
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Take the Golden Rule to School Rap
Take the Golden Rule to School Rap You don’t have to be like me to be OK, I don’t have to be like you for us to play. Respect my person, I’ll respect yours. If we can appreciate our differences, we may learn something new. Treat me like you want to be treated, Ill do the same for you. (Ramblings in Rhyme by Dr. Ivy)
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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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Teachers’ Guide to Trauma: 20 Things Kids with Trauma Wish Their Teachers Knew
by Dr. Melissa Sadin and Nathan Levy with Theo Sadin “Teachers’ Guide to Trauma is full of insights and each insight is flawlessly aligned with good teaching practices. There’s a tenderness to the book which makes you keep returning to its pages-not unlike the tenderness a teacher feels each time she helps a student succeed.”- Susan E. Craig, Ph.D. Author of Reaching and Teaching Children Who Hurt , Trauma Sensitive Schools: Learning Communities Transforming Children’s Lives , and...
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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 Is as Stressful as an ER. These Calming Strategies Can Help. (edsurge.com)
Gabrielle “pulls her anger in and lets the emotional elevator go down.” Kasey “stops, grounds herself, and lets out deep breaths.” And Nadia “takes a step back, calms herself, and re-approaches the situation with a thoughtful response rather than an immediate reaction.” Through their composed approaches, these teachers help maintain a supportive learning environment for our nation’s students. While these solutions seem simple in reflection, in the moment they can be a real challenge,...
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Teaching Teenagers to Cope With Social Stress (nytimes.com)
Almost four million American teenagers have just started their freshman year of high school. Can they learn better ways to deal with all that stress and insecurity? New research suggests they can. Though academic and social pressures continue to pile on in high school, teenagers can be taught effective coping skills to skirt the pitfalls of anxiety and depression. David S. Yeager, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and a leading voice in the growing...
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Teens are anxious and depressed, and turning to the school nurse for help. But most Illinois schools don’t have one. (chicagotribune.com)
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 1 in 20, or 2.6 million, U.S. children ages 6 to 17 had current anxiety or depression diagnosed by a health care provider in 2011-12. School nurses in Illinois say the increase is evident in the students from elementary to high school who enter their offices each day, requiring not only bandages and ice packs but also a quiet space to break from stress. Nurses now have to schedule meetings with parents about their child’s...
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Teens teach trauma care to Camden schools [CourierPostOnline.com]
Gemyra Wynn doesn't need to go into the details of her childhood in Camden. After sketching out how adverse childhood events can traumatize people and cause lifelong health consequences, the 17-year-old can just offer her ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) score — it's seven out of 10 — and leave it at that. The same goes for her fellow instructors, 16-year-old Aunyay Fussell and 15-year-old LeBaron Harvey. They each survived psychologically trying experiences. But these students are...
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Teens teach trauma care to Camden schools [CourierPostOnline.com]
Gemyra Wynn doesn't need to go into the details of her childhood in Camden. After sketching out how adverse childhood events can traumatize people and cause lifelong health consequences, the 17-year-old can just offer her ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) score — it's seven out of 10 — and leave it at that. The same goes for her fellow instructors, 16-year-old Aunyay Fussell and 15-year-old LeBaron Harvey. They each survived psychologically trying experiences. But these students are...
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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 Art of Control ACTIVITIES AND RESOURCES TO ENHANCE EXECUTIVE FUNCTION IN YOUNG CHILDREN
Executive function — our ability to remember and use what we know, defeat our unproductive impulses, and switch gears and adjust to new demands — is increasingly understood as a key element not just of learning but of lifelong...
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The Beginning of the End of Random Searches: Students Know What They Need Next [fixschooldiscipline.org]
By Ashley Ruano, Fix School Discipline, October 1, 2019 The #StudentNotSuspects coalition has long worked in Los Angeles to end the random searches policy that discriminate against students and create a hostile campus environment for students to learn. For many years, Los Angeles Unified School District implemented mandatory random metal detector searches in middle and high schools. The searches did not make campus environments more secure. Instead, the policy targeted, and criminalized...
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The Brain Science Is In: Students' Emotional Needs Matter (edweek.org)
Teachers, like parents, have always understood that children’s learning and growth do not occur in a vacuum, but instead at the messy intersection of academic, social, and emotional development. And they know that students’ learning is helped (or hindered) by the quality of students’ relationships and the contexts in which they live and learn. Working to weave those threads, skilled teachers often have yearned for schools—and policy approaches—that understand this complex reality. Such...
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The Deficit Lens of the 'Achievement Gap' Needs to Be Flipped. Here's How (edweek.org)
For too long, American schools have had a default orientation toward measuring students' abilities and achievement, rather than focusing on the resources-such as engaging learning environments and high-quality, culturally responsive teaching practices-that empower students to learn new concepts and skills. When data reveal students' shortcomings without revealing the shortcomings of the systems intended to serve them, it becomes easier to treat students as deficient and harder to recognize...
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The Evolution of a Trauma-Informed School
Two years after Edutopia filmed trauma-informed practices at a Nashville school, we check in with the principal to see what has changed. By Alex Shevrin Venet September 13, 2019 There is no arrival at a perfect implementation of trauma-informed practices, and no one knows this better than Mathew Portell, principal of Fall-Hamilton Elementary in Nashville. Portell has been leading Fall-Hamilton’s journey with trauma-informed practices for the past several years, and Edutopia profiled one...
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Mind Powers: Meditation Matters for Special Education Students [ChronicleofSocialChange.org]
While meditation has expanded in recent years from a zen-seeker’s path to higher consciousness to a best practice for hard-charging CEOs, it’s now gaining a foothold at a school in Southern California serving students with serious emotional and behavioral issues. Administrators at the Five Acres School in Altadena, Calif., are testing whether meditation and mindfulness can help students succeed in the classroom. A new mindfulness program implemented there in two semesters over...
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Mindfulness in Schools: When Meditation Replaces Detention (health.usnews.com)
At most schools, governed by a traditional disciplinary approach, the offender would land in the principal’s office, likely followed by a few days of detention: an hour after school, empty classroom, utter silence. At Robert W. Coleman Elementary School in Baltimore, kids are instead referred to the Mindful Moment Room, an oasis of colorful tapestries and beanbag chairs, oil diffusers and herbal tea, where they practice deep-breathing exercises, meditate and talk about what happened. It’s...
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Mindfulness practices help students deal with stress, behavior (post-gazette.com)
A focus on breathing is one of the first steps in yoga and mindfulness classes being taught among children and teens and their teachers in schools throughout the Pittsburgh area. “It’s empowering, using your own body and your own breath,” says Yoga in the Schools founder Joanne Spence. Explaining how something so simple can be helpful, she said, “Practice allows us to be present and accountable … in the midst of ups and downs in life.” Indeed, the class aims to help students focus, control...
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Resources -- Training
Training programs oriented for an entire school or school district. If you recommend any others besides those listed here, please leave a comment in this blog post with a link and/or information.
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Ms. Jen's Level 1 Trauma-Sensitive Schools Training: July 15-17, 2018
Ms. Jen Alexander, experienced teacher, school counselor, author, presenter, and leader in the movement to create trauma-sensitive schools will hold her first ever Level 1 Trauma-Sensitive Schools Training this summer in scenic Cedar Falls, Iowa. Dates are Sunday, July 15 thru Tuesday, July 17, 2018 with the main training event taking place on Monday, July 16. Ms. Jen's new book for educators on the topic of creating trauma-sensitive schools will be published by Brookes in Baltimore, and...
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New 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 Resources from the National Traumatic Stress Network
Last week, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) hosted a webinar geared for educators. The expert panel spoke about what schools and communities can do when there are allegations of sexual misconduct by an educator towards a student. This webinar was a follow up to a fact sheet that was developed by the Child Sexual Abuse subcommittee of the NCTSN in response to a request from educators on how to handle sensitive situations in which a student(s) alleges sexual abuse by an...
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New Resources on DACA from Teaching Tolerance [teachingtolerance.org]
Teaching Tolerance is a wonderful resource for educators, librarians, caregivers, or anyone who comes into contact with youth. This new section on their website " The Moment : Defending DACA and Busting Immigration Myths" is devoted to DACA information and resources. " The White House and Justice Department this week announced plans to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. How will this decision affect your students, their families and even your colleagues? Learn...
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Next "A Better Normal" community discussion series: April 16, 2020 — Education upended
Bob Eckstein This week, we're hosting one more 'A Better Normal' discussion: on Thursday, April 16, 2020....12 pm PT/ 1 pm MT/ 2 pm CT/ 3 pm ET. Lara Kain, ACEs In Education community manager, will lead a discussion with James Moffett, Jr., JM Educational Consulting and incoming principal of Faris Elementary in Hutchinson, KS; Emily Read Daniels, M.Ed., MBA, NCC, SEP in training, founder of HERE this NOW ; and Jim Sporleder, Jim Sporleder Consulting , former principal of Lincoln High School...
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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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No Place for Social-Emotional Learning In Schools? Are You Sure? [blogs.edweek.org]
Back in early January, I wrote a commentary for Education Week ( read it here ) that focused on ways that those of us who care about SEL can get critics to understand why it's important that schools focus on SEL. If you read the blog, and scrolled down to the comments, you saw that I did not win everyone over. I actually had some people e-mail me to send support because they were appalled by the comments. Unfortunately, I was not surprised by those comments. I was actually expecting them...
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'Nobody Learns It in a Day': Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools [edweek.org]
By Sarah D. Sparks, Education Week, August 20, 2019 There's never been a clearer scientific picture of the ways damaging experiences and intense, chronic stress can hurt a child's ability to learn in school. But for many schools, the picture of what trauma-sensitive schooling looks like in practice is still developing. "We're in an all-fired hurry because there's this 'trauma' thing and we have to help our kids," said Melissa Sadin, the director of the Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools...
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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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Nowhere to Hide: The Elephant in the [Class]room
We are trying to scoop water out of a boat which has gaping trauma-holes in the bottom.
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Nowhere to Hide the Elephant in the [Class]room
Developmental trauma changes the architecture of the physical brain, ability to learn and social behavior. It impacts two out of three children, but I didn’t even know what it was…
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Be part of a breathtaking tipping point !
. Education Equity for trauma-impacted children: from failing funding to fair funding. Be part of the solution! Background A heartfelt tip of the hat to the Basic Education Funding Commission...
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Be the Spark: Igniting trauma-informed change within our communities
Authors note: This piece is co-authored by @Lara Kain and @Christine Cissy White. Though we had never worked together or met, we were asked to co-present on creating t rauma-informed changes in communities by the Attachment Trauma Network for the first national (now annual) Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools Summit in Washington, DC. This article is an expanded essay version of that presentation). Be the Spark Oprah Winfrey helped mainstream discussion about...
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Becoming A Trauma Sensitive School: One California District's Commitment
Susan Jones, a member of Resilient Sacramento and Behavior Specialist at San Juan Unified School District, spent the day of the Becoming a Trauma Sensitive School conference, overjoyed. This conference has been Susan's long term goal with the district, and the day she planned for the convened administrators, teachers, and school staff members was an phenomenal success.
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Beyond Paper Tigers
By now, many of us in the ACEs movement have seen, or at least heard of, the documentary film, Paper Tigers . The film captures the lives of students, teachers, and administrators at Lincoln High School, and ultimately the entire community of Walla Walla, WA. I saw the movie for the second time this week, and was reminded of the spirit of collaboration and unconditional love that is ever present throughout the film. The entire school community -- administrators, teachers, health...
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Beyond Paper Tigers is Back!
Back for the second year, Beyond Paper Tigers conference will take place June 28th and 29th in Walla Walla, WA. Featuring Dr. Ken Ginsburg from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia as the keynote speaker, BPT builds on the story of one community and how they've learned that embracing trauma-informed care and implementing ACEs science truly takes a village. Operationalizing the latest in brain science, BPT will provide concrete strategies for intervention with youth, families, and communities...
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Beyond Paper Tigers: The Heart of the Matter
Graphic artist Anne Nelson created this visual roadmap during the partner showcase, capturing the "heart of the matter" for each community member Teri Barila, co-founder and CEO of the Children’s Resilience Initiative and the igniting force that brought change to a quiet corner of southeast Washington, kicked off last month’s Beyond Paper Tigers Conference by sharing one of her “aha” moments. In 2007, she attended a conference in Winthrop, WA, where Dr. Robert Anda spoke about the CDC-Kaiser...
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Black Girls Pay the Price When Police Enter Schools [jjie.org]
Sen. Marco Rubio sent a letter to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Attorney General Jeff Sessions this week wrongly blaming the Parkland shooting on the Department of Education’s School Discipline Guidance package. This guidance, released in 2014, reminded schools of their responsibility to address racial discrimination in school discipline, which affects students in every state. The guidance includes a series of recommendations to help close the school-to-prison pipeline, including...
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Book review: "Once I was very, very scared," a book on childhood trauma
The past few years have brought a wealth of evidence for the impact of childhood trauma on lifelong health. The AAP has recognized the importance of childhood trauma with conferences (2015 Violence, Abuse and Toxic Stress: An Update on Trauma-informed Care in Children and Youth) and resources ( AAP Trauma Toolbox for Primary Care .) Like many pediatricians, I have been grateful for the attention to and evidence base for an area of pediatrics I see on a daily basis but for which I have felt...
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Brain can be trained in compassion, study shows (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
A new study by researchers at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center of the University of Wisconsin–Madison shows that adults can be trained to be more compassionate. The report, recently published online in the journal Psychological Science , is the first to investigate whether training adults in compassion can result in greater altruistic behavior and related changes in neural systems underlying compassion. “Our fundamental question was, ‘Can compassion be trained...
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Brave Writer Podcast: Brain Breaks with Joshua MacNeill (bravewriter.com)
Today on the podcast we learn more about the developing brain so that we, as parents and home educators, can incorporate brain-based practices into our family’s lives. Our guest for this episode is Joshua MacNeill, Director of Lakeside’s NeuroLogic Initiative and an expert in trauma-informed education. For example, in the first year of life, more than one million new neural connections are formed every second . Adversity impairs these new connections, and the greater the adversity a child...
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Bringing Independence to the Classroom
As we celebrate July 4 th , Independence Day, a day typically filled with cookouts, fireworks, parades, and honor of past sacrifices made, my thoughts are drawn to the 1,000’s of classrooms filled with students seeking their own personal independence. Unfortunately, due to the interruption of trauma in childhood, they have become dependent on the maladaptive responses they have acquired in order to mitigate, compensate, cope and survive the impact of the adversity dealt them. Dysregulated...
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Building Authentic Relationships with Teens online training
I watched a few of the intro webinars to this course and it looks like a great training from the Center for Adolescent Studies. https://centerforadolescentstudies.com/bars/ 4-Weeks: May 29th - June 26th, 2018 (and a 2-week grace period to finish all lessons to get your certificate of completion) Online: Completely online; login whenever you want each week to access the course material (mostly video presentations, approx. 2 hours per week) Learn: Critical skills for building relationships...
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Building Crosswalks in Education
With states passing along the stressful challenge of knowing what to do with traumatized students to districts, and districts to schools, and schools to teachers, it is not difficult to understand why CASEL recently held a Congressional Briefing on Social and Emotional Learning and Teacher Education . The premise shared was that teachers themselves have difficult challenges so addressing these things with their students are presenting a problem. Panelists shared ideas and initiatives...
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Building Resilience in Challenging Times 2 Day virtual mini-conference.
Click here for details or download the attached flyer. https://www.eventbrite.com/x/building-resilient-students-in-a-pandemic-and-ti-special-education-programs-tickets-104769793272
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Burnout Isn’t Inevitable (edutopia.org)
In news that will surprise no teachers, a new study has found that 93 percent of elementary school teachers experience high levels of stress. But schools can mitigate the harmful effects of stress by providing proper supports, highlighting the importance of a holistic approach to teacher well-being. In the study, researchers from the University of Missouri surveyed 121 elementary school teachers, asking questions such as, “How stressful is your job?” and “How well are you coping with the...