Tagged With "Dynamic Mindfulness"
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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.
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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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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...
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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: 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: 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.
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Re: Cost of suspensions is high for students who drop out after discipline, report finds [EdSource.org]
The cost analysis kind of blows my mind. So glad to know this, thanks for posting!
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Re: An Evidence-Based Indictment of Inaction
Hey Daun I know when I was in high school my parents did not have a clue what was going on with myself and my two younger brothers....Their COMMUNICATION SKILLS and their CONFLICTS RESOLUTION SKILLS were practically non existent. All they knew WAS RAGE and RAGE then HIT ME.... with my own children I have taken so many parenting classes. But more important for me as a DAD is to recognize when my daughter or son 's Spirit IS CLOSED TOWARDS ME and they begin to isolate and not want top...
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Re: An Evidence-Based Indictment of Inaction
Wow, Rick, thank you for sharing. I am sorry that you had such experiences as a child. I am so encouraged by your own reflection and your own learning and your own changes. It sure seems like you may have broken the generational cycle. I am guessing that your own kids feel much differently about their childhoods with you !
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Re: San Diego Unified Launching New Food Recovery Program (timesofsandiego.com)
Thanks Jim! Absolutely concurring with you, it has always boggled my mind (and hurt my heart) that restaurants, schools, etc. throw away food at the end of the day. At a minimum, it should be composted. Thrilled San Diego Unified School District is a community of practice for other schools to model, my hope is the restaurant industry is soon to follow. Grateful to hear you were doing the same at Lincoln High in Walla Walla... It's heartbreaking to think there are myriad students and families...
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Re: Why We Can't Afford Whitewashed Social-Emotional Learning (ascd.org)
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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Trauma-Sensitive Remote Learning: Maintaining Predictability, Consistency and Belonging (traumasensitiveschools.org)
Trauma-sensitive educators told us that no matter how the remote learning is taking place across the district, (from direct instruction online as a class group, to remote learning with no face-to-face contact with a teacher or peers, etc.), having a regular time several times a week set aside for students to talk with their teachers —whether it be face to face, on a device or voice only on a phone— is critically important to buffer the traumatic impact of the current situation. Being able to...
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The Traumatic Impact of Racism on Young People and How to Talk About It [Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg]
Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg (Keynote speaker from the recent Creating a Resilient Community Conference) shared the excerpt from his book Reaching Teens titled The Traumatic Impact of Racism on Young People and How to Talk About It. This is a valuable resource for anyone interacting with youth and we are providing the excerpt as an attachment here for you to read and share. Also, Dr. Ginsburg will be coming back to our community (virtually) and you’ll be invited to his workshop. Look out for the...
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Teenagers and Reopening: Tips for helping kids stay safe during a confusing time [childmind.org]
By Rae Jacobson, The Child Mind Institute, June 23, 2020 It’s a trying time to be the parent of a teenager. After months of being cooped up at home away from friends, unable to attend school or go out, most kids are chomping at the bit to get back to the lives they had before the pandemic. Getting teens to take safety seriously is a struggle at the best of times, and as the nation moves towards reopening, it’s never been more important to ensure kids are following the rules. How can parents...
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Creating Equity and Acceptance in Schools
Becoming Trauma Informed is about changing ourselves and the environment to foster trauma resilience in those we come in contact with. If schools are using Social Emotional Learning curriculum (SEL) only as an add-on program to implement, then it isn’t about the teachers and environment changing, it is merely about changing the behavior of students. If we are solely trying to change others to make them conform to pre-set standards, it is continuing the oppressive cycle. Command and control...
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'Reimagining' schools must start with prevention [buffalonews.com]
By Melanie Blow, The Buffalo News, June 27, 2020 If New York State plans to, as Cuomo put it, “reimagine schools,” we should first reacquaint ourselves with their role outside of education. Many teachers perform a Sisyphean task of undoing the effects of the childhood trauma that two-thirds of children suffer at home. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention demonstrated that 10 childhood traumas change the way a young body and mind...
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Antiracism in Social-Emotional Learning: Why It’s Not Enough to Talk the Talk [edsurge.com]
By Tony Weaver, Jr. Jun 16, 2020 If there’s one thing Americans are doing right now, it’s talking. Talking even more than usual when schools are out and many are still working from home. Every day, new stories of discrimination and violence emerge that prompt new conversations. The moment our country faces weighs heavily on the mind of an adult. But one must wonder: What does it do to the mind of a child? Black students around the country are faced with a reality where they are isolated...
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Giving Grace in the Gray
Ambiguity. Nuance. Gray. We are living in this every day now. How do we support one another as we come back together in our schools and communities? Giving Grace in the Gray.
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Prevent Teacher Burnout
Great strategies! I am really happy with the information, techniques, and discussion from today's webinar. Thank you! Rated 5 out of 5 - Assistant Principal, Lancaster School District, California DMind is just as powerful for school staff as it is for students. Thank you for another wonderful discussion. Rated 5 out of 5 - School Counselor, Houston This is just a sample of the reviews from Niroga Institute’s recent free webinar Prevent Teacher Burnout. It's not too late to learn, practice...
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Choose Love Movement Introduces Free SEL Wellness Program for School Reopening
The Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement ™ launched a free social-emotional wellness program to support educators and students as they navigate the start of the 2020/21 school year. This special reentry unit, “Choosing Love in Our Brave New World,” is designed to help transition students back to class or to support them during distance learning. The Choose Love Movement honors six-year-old Jesse Lewis who was killed in the Sandy Hook, CT elementary school tragedy. “Choosing Love in Our Brave New...
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Calming the body before calming the mind: Sensory strategies for children affected by trauma [thesector.com.au]
By Clare Ryan and Berry Streets, The Sector, June 23, 2020 Children who have experienced trauma may find it more difficult to regulate their emotions and behaviours than other children. Understanding the impact trauma can have on brain development can help inform practical responses to these children’s needs. This short article describes how practitioners can use strategies that help calm children’s bodies in order to help calm their minds and emotions – specifically, the...
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Freedom From Trauma – Powerful & Profound Practices To Heal Trauma & Consciously Create The Body, Mind, Spirit You Truly Desire
We are living in complicated and stressful times. What needs to be healed seems more palpable than ever. It feels like the call to release what no longer serves has never been louder and we are feeling that tug at our core. While the founder of The League of Extraordinary People, Alfred White, has been gaining more clarity everyday on this, he was invited to be part of an event, more like a movement, to help others find freedom from what has been holding them back. It is a free, online...
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Addiction Born Out of ACEs and The Return of Hope [avahealth.org]
The downstream effect of childhood trauma has been well documented regarding the biological and psychosocial impacts. This presentation will highlight the neurobiological changes associated with ACEs that function as a "primer" for the onset of addiction and related behaviors. It will conclude with principles for influencing these same pathways that assist with restoration of the mind and health downstream effect of childhood trauma has been well documented regarding the biological and...
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Hope and Justice Art: Young people can submit their creations! (directingchangeca.org)
The Hope and Justice category was created under the guidance of educators, youth and young adults and community-based partners. While Directing Change will continue to offer it’s core film-focused contest and curriculums, the Hope and Justice category will accept and award submissions on a monthly basis and in multiple art forms. The Hope & Justice category is an opportunity for young people living through history to express their feelings, take action, and to inspire others through art.
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Practical Applications for Schools - They're Begging for It
Educators at all levels are asking for practical applications of what they've heard their students need due to ACEs, Trauma and brain research. Here are a few strategies from my upcoming book "The Whole Child School."
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The Power of Virtue in Trauma-Informed Education
Though we cannot fix or heal them, we likely do not even know who many of them are, we can empower them emotionally towards the possibility of their own potential.
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Trauma-responsive school thinks outside-the-box to engage students during pandemic
Before the pandemic, Sara Buckley, an 8 th grade science teacher at Park Middle School in Antioch, California, could handle students who were acting out during class. Understanding that trauma lies beneath disruptive behavior, she didn’t send kids to the principal for punishment. Instead, she’d talk with them to find out what was going on at home or outside of school—and then work out a plan for how to respond differently the next time they were triggered. They could visit the school’s...
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Trauma-Informed Education: Suburbancares Partners with Public, Parochial and Private Schools in Lagos State, Nigeria to Build Trauma-Informed Community
Suburban Healthcare Initiative (DBA, Suburbancares) has provided several training sessions and workshops in child trauma and child behavioral health awareness in several States in south-west Nigeria since 2009. The awareness campaign was started in response to the invitation by Mrs. Folasade Adefisayo who was Principal of the Corona Secondary School, Agbara at the time. Dr. Bukola Ogunkua, CEO Suburbancares and a child trauma expert with the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress...
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Freedom Reads: Anti-Bias Book Talk Series (socialjusticebooks.org)
In response to the overwhelming number of requests for recommendations of anti-bias children’s books, we are launching the Freedom Reads: Anti-Bias Book Talk series. Beyond just sharing booklists, we want to share how we select high-quality, anti-bias books so that parents and teachers can do the same. Teaching for Change associate director Allyson Criner Brown is producing the series for parents, teachers, and librarians. She explains, Freedom Reads: Anti-Bias Book Talk is part anti-bias...
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Re: Can Our Schools be Places to Heal Trauma?
Two useful tools to keep in mind: 1.) Have several dozen students anonymously fill out the 1-page ACE Questionnaire. Pool the results and, bringing them together in an auditorium, project their pooled, anonymous results, and ask them what they think those results mean. Freed of personal identity, the audience is notably open in their responses and discussion. 2.) Ask a class if they have ever written a play before. "No? Well, today we're going to learn how to write a play. Let's write a play...
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Press Release: No-Cost “Mind Matters Minutes” Builds Resilience in Youth
BERKELEY, CA (January 14, 2021) - Young people, especially in these times, can be stressed and anxious. Are you seeing this in the youth you serve? What about those youth who have experienced prior trauma or ACEs? Would building resilience skills help them? The Dibble Institute is pleased to announce Mind Matters Minutes , a free, virtual self-regulation series, created especially for today’s youth. Mind Matters Minutes provide teachers and youth workers with nine no-cost short video...
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Re: Unlearning the Triune (3-part) Model of the Brain - It's a Myth?!
Mike - Thank you for the kind and supportive approach to sharing your thoughts. Your compassionate response was encouraging. There are two quotes that come to mind. “All models are wrong, but some are helpful” and “Variation is the norm!” So, I say this in the spirit of those two quotes. The same events that are helpful for some, are harmful for others and vice versa. That is the reality of variation in the human experience. The triune brain model can be helpful to many, and it has been...