Tagged With "Dynamic Mindfulness"
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Turnaround for Children releases new paper and announces hiring for key positions
Michael Lamb, Executive Director, Washington D.C., Turnaround for Children sent the following message about a new paper, Building Blocks for Learning, just released by Turnaround and three new positions it is seeking to fill. Take a look: "Hi friends and colleagues, it’s an exciting time for Turnaround in Washington, D.C. as we work towards our vision that one day all children in the US attend schools that prepare them for the lives they choose. In addition to our exciting work in schools,...
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Using Big Data with a Warm Hand-off to Help Students
This piece is about how big data can be a service provider -- and there can be a warm handoff. We can use data and technology to improve education and healthcare and many other fields.
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Values for a Trauma-Informed Care Culture in Your Classroom and School
Five core values for establishing a trauma-informed culture in your classroom and/or school. An emphasis on these values lead to a relationship-based culture.
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Want Your Students to Be Kinder? Try This Assignment (edweek.org)
Justin Parmenter is a 7th grade language arts teacher at Waddell Language Academy in Charlotte, N.C. He was a fellow with Hope Street Group's NC Teacher Voice Network from 2016-2018 and currently serves on that organization's design team. You can find him on Twitter at @JustinParmenter . A few years ago, researchers at the University of Wisconsin set out to answer the question, “Can compassion be learned?” They wanted to see whether practicing the mindset of caring would lead to more caring...
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We Need the WHOLE to Create Trauma-Informed Systems
Sometimes I think I have PTSD from failed change efforts. I am not kidding. I have developed symptoms from living through nearly twenty years of failed education reform efforts. When I reflect on the many change efforts I participated in, I shudder. I try to block it out. I avoid discussing it. There is an "activating" body memory (SE™ talk) for me that is associated with prescriptive change efforts. When I encounter a stimulus or trigger, like someone talking about a new protocol intended...
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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.
Blog Post
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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Wellness and Resiliency Toolkit for Kids with Trauma
I'm excited to share a booklet created for youth in Oregon foster care at a Wellness camp this summer. Youth were provided with these quick, easy and effective (and evidence based) "Mindful Moments" exercises in their Wellness Toolkits and they were practiced throughout the day at camp so that they could be remembered in times of stress and dysregulation. The exercised are designed to quickly bring them back to a state of calm. The youth really enjoyed them, and found them easy and...
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What do you think, is a 6th SEL core competency needed?
The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) defines five core SEL competencies , including (1)self-awareness, (2)social awareness, (3)self-management, (4)relationship skills, and (5)responsible decision making. The CASEL Five SEL competencies ARE NOT sufficient to achieve that which they were created to accomplish and which CASEL itself was created to accomplish. There are 6 core competencies, not five, and the 6th is the one that is by far the most important.
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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...
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What If Schools Hired Dogs As Therapists? (brightreads.com)
A school in San Diego uses a “facility dog” to offer children a kind of healing that humans sometimes cannot provide. It used to take Mary Skrabucha five minutes to walk across the campus of The O’Farrell Charter School in San Diego. Now it takes her twenty, because with Sejera — a golden retriever — by her side, kids and teachers are constantly stopping to say hello. Sejera isn’t your average friendly retriever. She’s a trained “facility dog” who works with Skrabucha in Family Support...
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What Is Hip-Hop-Based Education Doing in Nice Fields Such as Early Childhood and Elementary Education?
Join us in Atlanta, GA on Feb 8 & 9th at our teachers conference "Discipline that Works!" Hear Dr. Bettina Love talk about Hip hop, grit, and academic success! Through Hip Hop, students embody the characteristics of grit, social and emotional intelligence, and the act improvisation- all of which are proven to be predictors for academic success! So how do we harness these skills to promote and nurture academic success?
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What it’s Like to Teach at One of America’s Least Racially Integrated Schools [theatlantic.com]
On a late February afternoon, Angela Crawford, an English teacher, stood in front of about three dozen Philadelphia educators—mostly young, black women—as they all swapped stories of small victories and challenges in their classrooms. Dressed in a “Black Lives Matter” T-shirt and slim black slacks, Crawford, at one point, reflected on what has helped her remain resilient while working in some of the nation’s least resourced and most segregated classrooms for 23 years. “Black women are...
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What Lies Beneath Behavior? Introducing Echo's New Infographic!
Every novelist, psychologist, anthropologist and your Aunt Jane have wanted to know this. What motivates people and what’s going on when their behavior is irritating or just plain doesn’t make sense? At Echo, we encourage adults to look beneath the behavior of children and to understand ‘behavior as communication.’ It may be that the child is choosing a way of communicating that is hard for you to deal with but that doesn’t diminish the fact that the behavior is driven by some deep need or...
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When Teachers Take A Breath, Students Can Bloom (npr.org)
"Just notice your breath, the sensation of your air coming in, going out," says Christa Turksma, a Dutch woman dressed all in white with silver-white hair. She's one of the co-founders of Cultivating Awareness and Resilience for Educators , or CARE for Teachers. For the past nine years at this annual five-day summer retreat, and now within schools, CARE for Teachers teaches what's called mindfulness: calming the body and mind through breathing and movement, and using insights from psychology...
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Why I believe Gregory Williams, and his book, Shattered By The Darkness, will help save lives and revolutionize healthcare.
When you first hear about it, it sounds unlikely, fact that something that happened to someone in utero, at the age of two months, or four years, or any time in childhood, is what is killing them as an adult, or making them want to die, or making them want to hurt themselves or others. Yet the connection between childhood trauma and adult disease, mental illness, addiction, suicide, violence – most all of society’s ills – is as irrefutable as the myriad truths revealed about it in the...
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Why Mandating Mental Health Education in Schools is a Band-Aid on a Gaping Wound
Don’t get me wrong: of course I care deeply about the mental and physical health of children, including my own son’s. I don’t want students to suffer in silence and shame. But I am very concerned about just how this topic will be taught in schools.
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Why Resilience is Harmful and How to Improve it
Resilience is awesome, but also poses some risks and challenges. In 2012 a special edition of the Social Justice Studies academic research journal explored some of the risks. An intro and 5 academic research articles go very deeply into the topic of the "Dangers of Resilience Promotion." All the articles can be downloaded free at this link. https://journals.library.brocku.ca/index.php/SSJ/issue/view/70 I will attempt to summarize those 6 articles here in common language, cuz the articles are...
Ask the Community
What do you think, is a 6th SEL core competency needed?
The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) defines five core SEL competencies , including (1)self-awareness, (2)social awareness, (3)self-management, (4)relationship skills, and (5)responsible decision making. The CASEL Five SEL competencies ARE NOT sufficient to achieve that which they were created to accomplish and which CASEL itself was created to accomplish. There are 6 core competencies, not five, and the 6th is the one that is by far the most important.
Calendar Event
Dynamic Mindfulness Foundations Training
Calendar Event
Dynamic Mindfulness Teacher Training
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Re: The Focus Room: A Calming, Welcoming Space to Restore Receptivity and Readiness to Learn
Thank you for expressing your interest Sara. Please see the two attached documents. We primarily focus on helping students reflect on their needs and their behavior, while helping them to also consider the needs of their fellow students, community members, and the learning environment in general. Please let us know if you would like more information. Thank you!
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Re: The Journey From Me to We: The Walla Walla Way
Fabulous post, Jen! Want to BE THERE in June, if only in my mind. In the meantime, Jen, sometimes, in a moment of overwhelm, just saying the name of that town — Walla Walla, Washington — brings me peace and joy. One — or at least I — cannot say those eight syllables without feeling JOY! And a sense of HOPE. Peace! C.
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Re: The Journey From Me to We: The Walla Walla Way
Carey - I couldn't agree more! I often tell people - "say Walla Walla, Washington 3 times without smiling, I dare you!" I agree, Jim. Teri, Rick, and the mission of CRI are truly an inspiration and a model for how a community can come together to address its most important issues.
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Re: For parents who want to talk to schools
Hello Ariane, I have some suggestions: Chapter 4 of The Connected Child (attached with permission) shows the disarming of fear to create felt safety in what I think is an approachable way that is easy to share with teachers. An Article of "Trauma Informed Classrooms" from Adoption Advocate (attached with permission) gives some practical framework to what is needed in a classroom setting TBRI® Animate: Toxic Stress & The Brain - is helpful as well. I provide resources for Southern...
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Re: Trauma is Messy
As a teacher, keep in mind the great potential role of Theatre as enabling people to speak about the unspeakable: "Hey, I'm not talking about me! We're talking about what's up there on the stage." So, what if you were to ask a class if they've ever written a play. No? "So let's write a play today. Let's write a play, Hmm, let's write a play about someone who's growing up in a house where someone's getting hurt. What's his or her name? And where's the house: In town or out in the country? And...
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Re: Could Parkland Shooting Be Prevented? Yes, and Runcie Knew How
Please see the attached report that demonstrates the effectiveness of the interventions - seen in the Paper Tigers movie: Higher Resilience and School Performance Among Students with Disproportionately High Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) at Lincoln High, in Walla Walla, Washington, 2009 to 2013 Research Report, February 2015 Conclusions This s tudy provides empirical support for the thesis that systemic changes in school practices, ones developed with the support of the community to be...
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Re: Partners in Georgia and States Near Georgia
Beth, I just wanted to share the promotional material for the conference, just in case you had folks you might want to send it to. Any help in getting the word out is greatly appreciated! Robbyn https://parentingbeyondpunishm...educationconference/ Tina Payne Bryson, PhD will be one of the keynote speakers: http://conta.cc/2r6Vqa8
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Re: Bringing Independence to the Classroom
Thank you. I am trying to imagine, these days, where children can ever feel truly safe. It is good to have these thoughts in mind.