Tagged With "free lunches"
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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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California Plans to End 'Lunch Shaming' That Guarantees Meals for All Students [usatoday.com]
By Joshua Bote, USA Today, October 14, 2019 A bill signed Saturday by California Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to cut the recent trend in schools of "lunch shaming." SB 265, which was originally introduced by California state Sen. Robert Hertzberg, will require that all public school students have a "state reimbursable" meal provided by the school "even if their parent or guardian has unpaid meal fees." It amends the Child Hunger Prevention and Fair Treatment Act of 2017, which previously stated...
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California Plans to End 'Lunch Shaming' That Guarantees Meals for All Students [usatoday.com]
By Joshua Bote, USA Today, October 14, 2019 A bill signed Saturday by California Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to cut the recent trend in schools of "lunch shaming." SB 265, which was originally introduced by California state Sen. Robert Hertzberg, will require that all public school students have a "state reimbursable" meal provided by the school "even if their parent or guardian has unpaid meal fees." It amends the Child Hunger Prevention and Fair Treatment Act of 2017, which previously stated...
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California schools find success building student confidence and campus culture [edsource.org]
When Christopher Gonzalez first entered John Marshall High School in Los Angeles, he noticed that students generally kept to themselves and their own cliques. “It was like a line you didn’t cross,” said Gonzalez, now a senior. The climate began to change more than a year ago: More greetings are exchanged in hallways. Virtually no one sits alone at lunchtime. Students from various cross sections of the school — gamers, artists, dancers, jocks and others — gather together in a small grassy...
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Is Your School Ready to be Trauma Informed and Trauma Sensitive?
If you are like many teachers, social workers, or administrators in schools, you've been reading about the need for trauma informed care and trauma sensitive schools. Odds are you didn't need to read the research to know something that you were already seeing in your classrooms, school hallways, and community. Unfortunately reading about it, seeing the need, wanting to make changes, doesn't make the change happen. Five years ago, as the executive director of a school that needed to change, I...
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Jubilee Leadership Academy: Using ACEs Science to Transform School Culture
Students at JLA are reminded that change starts with themselves In 2004, after nearly a decade as program director at Jubilee Leadership Academy (JLA), a Christian alternative boarding school for troubled boys ages 13-18 in Prescott, WA, Rick Griffin decided to take a job in Phoenix, AZ, to work with adults with developmental disabilities. There, he began to see similarities between the issues they were having and what he saw in the kids at JLA. “There was a cognitive reason these adults I...
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K12 is moving to ease food insecurity (districtadministration.com)
When the New York City Department of Education announced in September that all public school students will now receive free lunch, it joined a growing number of cities around the country trying to ease food insecurity and end the phenomenon of "lunch shaming." Previously about three-quarters of the city's 1.1 million public school students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, but many didn't participate, often because parents hadn't completed necessary forms, or the student wanted to...
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Lunch leftovers: How “sharing tables” help Syracuse City schools reduce food waste (syracuse.com)
The Syracuse City School District is not allowed to send leftovers home with students, due to state law. But for several years, the district has adopted a small-scale but creative, scalable approach to minimizing waste: sharing tables. This is how it works: Every student gets a lunch. If he or she doesn’t want a part of the lunch, such as milk, the student can drop off the milk on a designated table in the lunchroom. Another student who wants a second milk, for example, can then pick up the...
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Majority of U.S. public school students are in poverty [WashingtonPost.com]
For the first time in at least 50 years, a majority of U.S. public school students come from low-income families, according to a new analysis of 2013 federal data, a statistic that has profound implications for the nation. The Southern Education...
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‘The first-graders will cry.’ Schools rethink policies that shame kids at lunch. [SacBee.com]
There won’t be any more cheese sandwiches served at Elk Grove Unified schools. The region’s largest school district will no longer give students a bland, alternative lunch when they run out of meal funds or forget their lunch money. Elk Grove Unified is joining districts across the region and nation that are changing rules so that children who come up short for lunch money aren’t embarrassed with a different meal than what their peers receive – or not fed at all, as has been the case...
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The Importance of Quiet Time (dailygood.org)
The destruction of our inner selves via the wired world is an even more recent, and more subtle, phenomenon. The loss of slowness, of time for reflection and contemplation, of privacy and solitude, of silence, of the ability to sit quietly in a chair for fifteen minutes without external stimulation — all have happened quickly and almost invisibly. A hundred and fifty years ago, the telephone didn’t exist. Fifty years ago, the Internet didn’t exist. Twenty-five years ago, Google didn’t exist.
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The Relentless School Nurse: Finding Flowers and Hidden Biases
When one of my four preschools celebrated Cinco de Mayo, they held a parade to kick off the fiesta. Since all of my students were marching in the parade, of course, I joined in the fun and provided extra support as we marched 60 students around several city blocks. I was the caboose at the very end of the parade line as we marched two by two in the neighborhood. My partner, 4-year-old Janielys (the name is changed), seemed very excited to be marching with the nurse! My students are primarily...
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This bullied teen's app helps kids find lunch buddies (msn.com)
As 16 year old Natalie Hampton knows firsthand, no kid deserves to sit alone at lunch. To view the 1.18 minute video clip on Pop Sugar, please click here.
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RESPITE Conference - Registration is OPEN!
RESPITE Conference: Building a Trauma-Informed Community Saturday, October 12, 2019 from 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM Granada Heights Friends Church – La Mirada 11818 La Mirada Blvd., La Mirada, CA 90638 About the Conference: Learn more about the impacts of trauma through an informative and interactive day of training with education , resources , and tools that will equip you and your environment to serve the most vulnerable among us. The day will include main sessions, tailored breakouts, and...
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Rocked by suicides, Palo Alto high schools want to make mental health care as normal as eating breakfast [PRI.org]
When students returned to their two public high schools in Palo Alto, California in August, they found something new on campus: wellness centers. In this Silicon Valley town that has experienced too many teen suicides, the schools are trying to make mental health services as normal as eating breakfast or taking medicine for a physical ailment. At the wellness centers, students can visit a nurse, see a counselor, or just relax with a granola bar or cup of tea. “I actually come in here quite...
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Re: How are schools incorporating trauma informed practices, if they are at all?
Lee ~ You hit on a key point. No one should be surprised that we don't "punish" the students. We use a restorative justice model to teach students how their actions/behaviors impact the community as a whole. It's time intensive, but it has helped prevent suspensions and expulsions, which has helped create stability in the lives of our students. While I'd like to believe that everyone was on board with the restorative justice model, I know that for some of the staff who had been in the school...
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Re: How are schools incorporating trauma informed practices, if they are at all?
Hi Dominic, I am happy to share our intake survey. I am attaching two documents. The word document is the one that we have all students fill out. We also have the Risk Assessment Survey questions as a separate document (PDF) in case a student does not feel comfortable answering the questions with their name on document. We have recently converted this document to a "google form" so that students can fill it out electronically. All of our students are assigned a chromebook during orientation.
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Trauma Informed Education
We have finally completed our one day seminar on trauma informed education. We will be in Los Angeles in February, New York in early March and Michigan in April. We have attached brochures for each of these presentations Hope to see you there!
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Trauma Informed Education
I am up in New York this week doing trauma informed education training for PESI. If anyone is interested in hanging out and sharing ideas I will be in white plains on wednesday, plainview on thursday and in Manhattan on thursday evening/friday. See attached brochure
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Trauma Informed Schools Network Conference: Cultivating Connections
We would like to make the community aware that an amazing national team of practitioners are hosting the Trauma Informed Schools Network Conference: Cultivating Connections in Nashville, TN at Lipscomb University from July 15-16, 2019. The conference will only be around 125 participants. The mission of the conference is to create networks and connections through learning about best practices associated with trauma informed practices. The design of the conference will be trauma informed in...
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Trauma-informed teaching changes culture in Caldwel [IDEDNEWS.org]
From the Idaho Education News - Trauma-informed teaching changes culture in Caldwell By Andrew Reed 01/31/2018 CALDWELL — Abuse. Bullying. Divorce. Neglect. Some students bring these experiences to school from home, which they can’t get out of their brain and truly focus on their learning. Angela Layne is no stranger to working with students who have experienced trauma. The Lewis and Clark Elementary counselor is changing the way students’ express feelings at school. She introduced...
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Trauma-Responsive Education Is Changing School Culture
My involvement with Topper Academy began when the vice-mayor told me that a new principal was coming to the alternative high school and she asked if I would reach out to her regarding trauma-informed education. So, I invited Melanie Riden-Bacon (Mrs. RB ) to attend the four-hour, trauma-informed training. I noticed by the end of the training that she had tears in her eyes.
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Universal free lunch is linked to better test scores in New York City, new report finds [chalkbeat.org]
Offering all students free lunch helps boost academic performance, a new report, which looked at meal programs in New York City middle schools, shows. The study, out of Syracuse University’s Center for Policy Research, assessed the impact of universal free lunch on students who previously didn’t have access to such a meals program. Researchers found “statistically significant” bumps in reading and math state test scores once students attended schools with universal free lunch. One way to...
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Vegan School Lunches Expand Despite Opposition From Meat Industry (pewtrusts.org)
PORTLAND, Maine — Cafeteria worker Alison Mason held out the options on a typical Friday at East End Community School, an airy elementary school on a hilltop in this coastal city: in one hand, a plate of traditional cheese pizza, in the other, a vegan option with milk-free flatbread, hummus, and sliced raw carrots, cucumber and olives. Portland, Maine, is among the 14% of school districts across the country that provided vegan lunches for kids in at least one school in 2017, up from 11.5% in...
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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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Ward Melville High helps staff de-stress with relaxing music, soft lighting
By Joie Tyrrell joie.tyrrell@newsday.com @JoieTyrrell Updated September 29, 2019 District officials are touting a newly created wellness room at Ward Melville High School as a lesson in serenity, where the surroundings help teachers and staff de-stress over the course of a hectic workday. The "WellVille" classroom, part of the wellness program in the Three Village school district, has been transformed into an "experience," with soft lighting, relaxing music and lounge chairs, school...
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Washington, DC, City Council Education Committee probes how trauma-informed schools can help students
Two-and-a-half years ago, a school administrator confronted District of Columbia Councilmember David Grosso with a stark and surprising reality when he visited the Walker-Jones Education Campus to learn about a literacy intervention program. At the...
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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 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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White House convenes federal, state, and local leaders to address trauma-informed approaches in schools
With just four months remaining in the Obama presidency, the White House assembled leaders from 14 states and the District of Columbia and key administration officials for a day-long conference, “ Trauma Informed Approaches in Schools: Supporting Girls of Color and Rethinking Discipline.” Last summer’s White House meeting, titled “Rethink School Discipline,” covered issues related to the CDC-Kaiser Permanente ACE Study and trauma, but transforming schools through trauma-informed approaches...
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Why a Texas school district is helping immigrants facing deportation [hechingerreport.org]
This story is part of a series about how schools, teachers and students are coping with the immigration crisis. HONEY GROVE, Texas — Abigail Rubio, 16, was eating lunch in the cafeteria of Honey Grove High School when she found out ICE was raiding the trailer factory where her dad worked. “Did y’all hear about what happened at Load Trail?” a friend asked. Abigail, or Abby as friends and family call her, went on social media. On Snapchat, a friend asked if she’d talked to her dad yet. The...
Ask the Community
Philly here I come
I am going to be in King of Prussia doing a presentation on Trauma and Conduct Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Disorder the first week of October. Would love to have lunch or dinner with any of the Philly folks who are doing such a good...
Ask the Community
Trends in Trauma-informed Organization Development
I am curious to know how members of the group are seeing trauma-informed care being implemented in local/state education agencies or even private education/community support agencies that look at collective impact. Particularly, in addition to reading/math strategies, technology, curricula-- as observed in your work--which improvement content/strategies/competencies are emphasized by local/state education agencies with high federal programs funding/high utilization of free-reduced lunch?
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2016 EdSource Symposium [Oakland, CA]
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Resilience for Educators (free webinar series)
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Resilience for Parents (free webinar series)
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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: How Facial Expressions of Adults Affect Children
We are our children's mirrors , they reflect our moods and actions. Putting on a happy face is one skill we parents need to learn. It is tough but crucial for their mental well-being.
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Re: Aiming for Discipline Instead of Punishment (edutopia.org)
Thank you, Jim. Concurring, the culture shift of creating safe spaces where students (and school staff) can calm their amygdala and access their pre-frontal cortex isn't about not holding children/youth/adults accountable. There's not an aspect of this paradigm shift that is not about holding individuals accountable. Rather, how can systems create an environment where every adult on campus (front office staff, lunch court, cafeteria, etc.) understands how our brains work and look at behavior...