Tagged With "Gun Rights"
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[Free Webinar] Using Trauma-informed care to identify and support at-risk students (4-part series)
[Webinar] Using Trauma-informed care to identify and support at-risk students May 3, 2018 12:00 - 1:00 PM PDT Save my seat Join Dr. Sampson-Jackson - a leader in Trauma-Informed Care - to learn how school leaders and support staff can proactively identify and support student needs. Our focus will be on proactive, actionable and collaborative strategies you can start using right away. We will take a case study approach to ground the strategies in situations you see on your campus. Case...
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From "Common Core" to "Common Care" Standards - Making the Connection between Academic Content and a Compassionate Academy
For many, a shift in professional standards for school administrators might be proverbial "back page" news. Think again, especially for those who recognize that in and across our school systems there has been little understanding of the connection...
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Genetic and Environmental Determinants of Biobehavioral Health
I just got my CD of the 25th annual Boston Trauma Conference (BVK). I am listening to differential gene expression in peer reared versus mother reared rhesus monkey studies. I don't know if we can get a group ACEs subscription to...
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(Georgia) School leader paves a more promising path [DistrictAdministration.com]
Clayton County, GA -- Luvenia Jackson knows students can’t learn when they’re in jail. During 40 years in education, the Clayton County Public Schools superintendent has seen that academic performance cannot improve systemwide under zero-tolerance discipline . Instead of leading to safer buildings and higher achievement, the strict policies cause excessive suspensions, lost instruction time, and students to be needlessly traumatized by criminal charges—all over...
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Get Education Right From the Start of School [PSMag.com]
Starting school at kindergarten. One teacher for an age-graded classroom. Teacher-led learning: “Repeat after me.” For nearly 100 years, these have been the traditions, routines, and expectations of American primary schools. Over that time, much has changed in children’s lives — there is now greater demographic diversity, to say nothing of the relentlessly changing technology, globalization, and growing recognition that education requires much more than rote learning — yet little has changed...
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Good Choices FEEL Good - An Early SEL Lesson from Grandma Boom / ORAEYC Blog
The little baby dinosaur was afraid to come out to play.....teaching empathy
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Guide - Creating Trauma-Informed Policies: A Practice Guide for School and Mental Health Leadership
Author, Leora Wolf-Prusan, EdD, School Mental Health lead for SAMHSA's Mental Health Technology Center Pacific Southwest http://mhttcnetwork.org/mhttc/mhttc-psw.html Creating compassionate policies is a cornerstone strategy of educational leadership. This guide provides a deep dive into developing, implementing, and evaluating trauma-informed and compassionate school policies. It highlights four "choice points" for education and mental health leadership: Choice Point 1: Names &...
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Healing ACE's
Healing Childhood Trauma I’d like to thank each member of ACE’s Connection for all your work helping and supporting children through various activities and organizations. You are clearly a collection of people who care about the children of the world. It is in recognition of these efforts that I ask you to consider two books on healing childhood trauma. They represent a life-time partnership dedicated to raising and educating healthy children. Secondly, I’d like to ask you for a word of...
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Held back, but not helped (hechingerreport.org)
Administrators at Carver say that students who enter high school overage feel like they’re wearing a scarlet letter, regardless of why they were retained. “There’s so much shame attached to it. Students constantly tell me, ‘I want to be at my right grade,’” said Jerel Bryant, Carver’s principal. “It’s a huge thing.” Those doubts and shame are one of the many reasons that overage students are at significant risk of dropping out of school. But in New Orleans, overage students are incredibly...
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Helping Traumatized Kids Return to The Classroom After a Disaster
This post draws on experiences and lessons learned from working during the recovery phase of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, La 2005. Disasters are calamitous events, traumatic and customarily outside the scope of normal human experiences and likely to involve psychological and physical injury. Disasters uniquely affect children because they are afflicted not only by the trauma of the event but also by their parents' fear and distress. When disasters strike, it disrupts the functioning of...
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Here’s advice from a social worker on how schools can support transgender students right now [chalkbeat.org]
Soon after news broke that the Trump administration could further roll back civil rights protections for transgender students, one New York City teacher sent an email blast to her fellow educators. She was searching for materials to use in biology class that reflect people of different gender identities, but couldn’t find anything. Many city educators may similarly grapple with how to support transgender students after it was reported that the Trump administration is considering whether to...
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Hopkins Schools therapy dog program helps connect students with mental health resources (hometownsource.com)
Officials in the Hopkins School District have been working to create accessible mental health resources for students. One of those initiatives is partnering with North Star Therapy Animals. Through that collaboration, the district brings therapy dogs to schools for students to interact with. “Right now, the dogs are in the building one day a week, so North (Junior High) it’s usually on Mondays, West (Junior High) it’s usually on Tuesdays, at the high school we have Fridays,” said Terese...
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How 8 Large California Districts Are Using Data to Decode Social-Emotional Learning — and Predict Students’ Academic Success [the74million.org]
W hen some teachers in the Long Beach Unified School District hear students say they’re bad at math, they rephrase. You’re not bad, you’re just not understanding it yet. It’s not too difficult, it’s just challenging right now. These educators are helping students develop a growth mindset, a belief that they can improve their skills through effort. A growth mindset is one of four social-emotional learning traits the district — along with others in California — are trying to teach their...
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How "Chair Yoga" supports SEL (smartbrief.com)
Eanes ISD in Austin, TX, where I am a behavior support teacher, is committed to preparing and inspiring all students for life-long success. We focus on the whole student, including social-emotional learning, collaboration, communication, problem-solving, stress-management and leadership, to name a few. Teaching these skills creates successful students and successful people. Research shows that when we experience stress, our brain’s ability to think logically goes “off line” because our...
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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 Mindfulness Can Help Teachers and Students Manage Challenging Situations (kqed.org)
Each moment comes with its own feeling quality—pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral—even if we’re not always aware of it. The basic attitude we humans share about experience is that we want more of the pleasant variety and less (or none) of the unpleasant. In fact, “stress” could be just another name for “unpleasant.” It’s important to note that there’s no advantage in seeking out unpleasant experiences and nothing wrong with enjoying, sustaining, and appreciating the pleasant ones. In fact,...
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How One Philadelphia After-school Program Works to Be Trauma-informed [youthtoday.org]
On an afternoon in October, kids in the Sunrise of Philadelphia after-school program made tissue-paper marigolds, assembled little altars and created masks. It was the Day of the Dead celebration held by Sunrise partner, Fleisher Art Memorial . They wrote poems about people who were no longer with them, either lost to death or simply separated across distance — a possibility in this largely immigrant and refugee community. The activity gave them a chance to explore loss and sadness, which —...
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How to Keep Children's Stress From Turning Into Trauma [nytimes.com]
By Stacy Steinberg, The New York Times, May 7, 2020 Children may be processing the disruptions in their lives right now in ways the adults around them do not expect: acting out, regressing, retreating or even seeming surprisingly content. Parents need to know that all of this is normal, experts say, and there are some things we can do to help. “Our natural response to scary things is biologically to release stress hormones,” said Dr. Nadine Burke Harris , a pediatrician and surgeon general...
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Hurtful Words: Association of Exposure to Peer Verbal Abuse With Elevated Psychiatric Symptom Scores and Corpus Callosum Abnormalities Martin H. Teicher, MD et. al.
Objective: Previous studies have shown that exposure to parental verbal abuse in childhood is associated with higher rates of adult psychopathology and alterations in brain structure. In this study the authors sought to examine the symptomatic and...
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[Indiana] Teachers’ group wants mandatory kindergarten, trauma-informed care [wishtv.com]
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The Indiana State Teachers Association published its 2018 legislative priority list Thursday, calling on lawmakers to make big changes for Hoosier students and schools next year. The ISTA has 16 wishes for the new year ranging from changing teacher qualifying exams to making kindergarten mandatory. “We are often accused of complaining about a lot of things but never offering solutions,” ISTA President Teresa Meredith said. “We have really been cognizant of solutions. We...
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School Nurses Share Their Voices, Trauma, and Solutions by Sounding the Alarm on Gun Violence [link.springer.com]
By Robin Cogan, Donna M. Nickitas, Donna Mazyck, Sunny G. Howell, Springer Link, November 22, 2019 Abstract Purpose of Review The purpose of this review is to discuss the impact of gun violence within schools from the perspective of school nurses. School nurses are first responders whose skills are crucial to ensuring the health and safety of students, staff, and faculty within schools and the surrounding community. Recent Findings In the USA, fear has long dictated how schools invest their...
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School safety bill inspired by Santa Fe shooting introduced in Texas [kxan.com]
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — School security experts gave lawmakers their input on legislation that aims to improve safety on Texas campuses. The legislation, Senate Bill 11 , was authored by State Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood. His district includes Santa Fe, Texas, where a gunman killed 10 people on May 18, 2018. "We say a lot of times that education is the most important thing we do in Texas, but it’s really just right below public safety," Taylor said as he laid out his bill at Tuesday's...
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School Walkout: An Adult Ally Guide (youthempowerment.com)
Amplify their voice, not yours. Broadcast your willingness to be a "helper". Assume competence in youth leadership. Don't assume anything else. The moment news spread that the students of Parkland, Florida were using their voices to speak out against school violence, Rep. Shawn Harrison staffer claimed that the students were paid actors. This reaction isn’t uncommon. Some adults in positions of power are hesitant to include youth voice in the public sphere, and some will use any means...
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Schools find one simple answer to attendance problem: washing machines [Today.com]
Remember middle school? Remember how everything could be mortifying, especially if you didn't have the right brand of jeans or that certain kind of backpack or the expensive boat shoes everyone else (yes, everyone, Mom!) has? Now imagine middle school if you not only couldn't afford those brands, but you couldn't even find a way to clean the clothes you do have. The prospect might just be mortifying enough to make you skip class altogether. Now, two school districts have found that the...
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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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Seven Lessons from Mister Rogers That Can Help Americans Be Neighbors Again (mindful.org)
Fred McFeely Rogers was a shy, somewhat awkward, and sometimes bullied child growing up in the 1930s. After going to college for what he called his “first language”—music—he prepared to enter seminary and study for the ministry. But on a visit home for Easter, he saw television for the first time. He hated it—people on the program were throwing pies in each other’s faces, and Fred found that demeaning. Nonetheless, he sensed instantly television’s capacity for connection and enrichment. That...
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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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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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Speaking Up Without Tearing Down (tolerance.org)
A veteran human rights ed ucator explains the value of teaching students to call each other in rather than out. Most teachers look for opportunities to build a human rights culture and to counter hatred, bigotry, fear-mongering and intolerance. One way to do this, when students make a mistake, is to call them in rather than calling them out . Doing so prepares them for civic engagement by encouraging a sense of hope and possibility. In conversations and debates about social justice issues,...
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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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Starting the School Year Optimally
So, the start of the school year is not easy for many students, especially those who have experienced or are experiencing trauma and stress and abuse. And, for those who have experience Big T trauma (immigration issues; fires; floods), the beginning of the academic year may not be easy. I think we have, unfortunately, not recognized the many aspects that need to be considered on the first few days of school. Transitions are not easy and we tend to think that one day orientations, filling out...
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Student’s Nonprofit Helps Promote Peace (hechingerreport.org)
Two years ago, when Jackie Brenner was 16, she was struggling to recover from a difficult knee surgery and to deal with her mother’s fight with breast cancer. Her life was full of stress. She started researching meditation, yoga and nutrition, and she incorporated what she found into her daily routine. Soon, she started spreading her enlightenment to other students. Through Piece of Peace , Ms. Brenner’s nonprofit, she teaches others how to live healthy lives. The effort is most established...
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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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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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Talking to Students About Grief (edutopia.org)
Grief is universal. It is in the kindergarten classroom when a class pet dies, the sixth grade that reads A Bridge to Terabithia , and the college history seminar in which students and teachers parse texts from the Holocaust. Research suggests that seven out of 10 teachers have a student in their classroom who is bereaved or actively grieving, and teachers carry their own losses too, yet mortality is often left out of discourses surrounding social and emotional learning and teacher training.
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Teaching Through Coronavirus: What Educators Need Right Now (tolerance.org)
On Monday we asked our community of educators what they need in the face of uncertainty caused by school closures and the COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly 2,000 educators responded, and the range of those responses illustrates the incredible responsibilities they feel for their students’ learning and well-being. More than 98 percent were facing school closures—and the ensuing consequences fell on educators quickly. Overwhelmingly, these educators requested resources they could easily share with...
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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 Complicated Task of Identifying Homeless Students [TheAtlantic.com]
The number of homeless students in the United States has doubled in the past decade. During the 2013-14 school year, more than 1.3 million students were homeless, a 7 percent increase over the previous school year, according to a new report by the advocacy group Civic Enterprises and the polling firm Hart Research Associates. A disproportionate number are students of color or identify as LGBT. As alarming as those numbers are, the fact that figures on homeless students exist at all is a step...
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The Conversation We’re All Not Having: Poor Students Need Our Help Outside the Classroom Too [The74million.org]
Washington State Teacher of the Year Nate Gibbs-Bowling made waves in the education world recently with his essay, “ The Conversation I’m Tired of Not Having .” Gibbs-Bowling bluntly called out the lack of political will and urgency around educational equity, writing up front, “I want to tell you a secret: America really doesn’t care what happens to poor people and most black people.” He’s right — but goes on to draw an incomplete...
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The Developing Brain & Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
Thanks to an explosion in scientific research now possible with imaging technologies, such as fMRI and SPECT, experts can actually see how the brain develops. This helps explain why exposure to adverse childhood experiences can so deeply influence and change a child's brain and thus their physical and emotional health and quality of life across their lifetime. The above time-lapse study was conducted over 10 years. The darker colors represent brain maturity (brain development). I have added...
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The federal Handle with Care Act is designed to connect children who experience trauma to trauma informed school resources
Click here for the full press release: Proposed Federal Legislation: Handle with Care Act KAINE, MANCHIN, CAPITO INTRODUCE BIPARTISAN LEGISLATION TO CARE FOR CHILDREN IMPACTED BY OPIOID ABUSE Thursday, April 26, 2018 Bristol Virginia Public Schools Superintendent: this bill ‘will equip us to better achieve our vision of enabling all students to thrive’ Washington, D.C. – Yesterday, U.S. Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA), Joe Manchin (D-WV), and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) introduced the Handle with...
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Michelle Kinder: 3 discipline approaches DISD should use instead of suspension [DallasNews.com]
This week, Dallas Independent School District trustee Miguel Solis proposed a new disciplinary approach that would all but eliminate suspension as a punishment for the elementary grades. He’s right to do so. Suspension rates in Dallas and around the state are much too high, especially for black students. However, for this culture shift to succeed, it is imperative that the trustees give new supports to teachers, administrators and students to better handle difficult situations. Solis’s...
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Michigan Trauma Informed Education
We are working with PESI, a leader in professional development, to offer a full day training in trauma informed education. This content follows the content of our book on Supporting and Educating Traumatized Students. We will be in Michigan April 19, (Sterling Heights) 20, (LIvonia) and 21 (Ann Arbor) See the attached brochure If this goes well they will continue to offer this next year. Hope to see you there
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Miscounting Poor Students [usnews.com]
THE NUMBER OF POOR students enrolled in a particular school or living in a certain school district is one of the most important education data points that exists, and the stakes are high for getting the count right. The figures are used to direct billions of dollars in federal and state aid, and they're a pillar of K-12 accountability systems that ensure disadvantaged students are keeping up with their wealthier peers. But the method that's traditionally used to track them – how many...
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Modernizing Career and Technical Education (edutopia.org)
“Young people used to follow a path right out of school to the factory with just a little bit of job training, [but] those jobs are not there anymore,” said Neil Ridley, director of the State Initiative at Georgetown University’s Center for Education and the Workforce . “High school shouldn’t be seen as just a pipeline anymore; it’s a building block.” Sprawled across 65 sun-drenched acres, Skyline High School is an anomaly in the relatively affluent and white neighborhood where it resides.
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Navigating the Holidays for Students with ACEs
Over the last few weeks, I have had countless conversations with schools about the uptick of behavioral issues this time of year. Many educators are recognizing that students with ACE’s have a tough time around the holidays, but very few people know what to do about it. While there is no one-size-fits-all answer, below are the top three pieces of advice I have been sharing. Avoid some of the most common holiday traditions: When we have negative experiences, our brain latches on to everything...
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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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Next "A Better Normal" community discussion series: May 7, 2020 — Education Upended, continued
Joel Heller Thursday, May 7, 2020 Education Upended, continued. Please join us for the ongoing discussion of "A Better Normal — Education Upended". We are going to bring our focus back to the future. Using our breakout session format, we will identify the strategies and lessons learned from the past three weeks on regulation, relationships, and family connections that we want to bring into the future of school and ways in which we might do that. Our current capacity is 100 participants, so...