Tagged With "Asian Americans"
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Imagine Online School in a Language You Don’t Understand [newyorktimes.com]
"The parents of millions of American schoolchildren are not fluent in English, presenting an extra challenge to learning at home." [newyorktimes.com]
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Improving California school environments focus of pilot program (edsource.org)
This week the departments of education in Orange and Butte counties, along with UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools, announced a pilot program to develop a training curriculum based on multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS), an approach to learning and behavioral problems in which students progress through a range of interventions depending on their need levels. The program, which is funded by a $15-million grant that was part of the budget deal struck by Gov. Jerry Brown and the...
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Improving Teaching Effectiveness: Final Report [rand.org]
The Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative, designed and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was a multiyear effort to dramatically improve student outcomes by increasing students' access to effective teaching. Participating sites adopted measures of teaching effectiveness (TE) that included both a teacher's contribution to growth in student achievement and his or her teaching practices assessed with a structured observation rubric. The TE measures were to be...
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Incorporating Trauma Informed Practice and ACEs into Professional Curricula - a Toolkit
The toolkit is designed to aid faculty and teachers in a variety of disciplines, specifically social work, medicine, law, education, and counseling, to develop or integrate critical content on adverse childhood experiences and trauma informed care into new or existing curricula of graduate education programs. This toolkit provides an overview of colleges and universities that have courses in trauma-informed practice and ACEs science. Most of the toolkit comprises content for a course on...
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Indigenous educators fight for an accurate history of California (High Country News)
In the 1950s, after renovations were complete, visitors could wander into the chapel and see statues of saints and pictures of the Virgen de Guadalupe on the stucco walls. They could see the simple wooden pews that still filled the church and, outside, the stones once used to grind grain, and then wander through the Spanish-style garden with its large gray fountain, rose bushes and lemon trees that glowed in the California sun. Tour guides typically avoided the darker details of its history,...
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School meals: a reflection of growing poverty in LA (calmatters.org)
The numbers of Los Angeles children who need the meals have been rising sharply in recent years. In 2015-2016, 72.4% or 405,338 LAUSD students qualified for the free or reduced price meals, according to a 2017 Food Research Action Center report. “We have the highest participation of students who are served breakfast in the classroom,” said Monica Garcia, a member of the LAUSD School Board. “Also, most of our schools (75%) are in the Community Eligibility Program, where all students get all...
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School Segregation Is Not a Myth [theatlantic.com]
Is school segregation getting worse? Plenty of people say yes, including scholars , journalists , and civil-rights advocates . For the first time in years, there’s something approximating a consensus: Racially divided schools are a major and intensifying problem for American education—maybe even a crisis . There’s seemingly compelling numerical evidence, too. According to my analysis of data from the National Center on Education Statistics, the number of segregated schools (defined in this...
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Secondary Traumatic Stress for Educators: Understanding and Mitigating the Effects [KQED]
By Jessica Lander Roughly half of American school children have experienced at least some form of trauma — from neglect, to abuse, to violence. In response, educators often find themselves having to take on the role of counselors, supporting the emotional healing of their students, not just their academic growth. With this evolving role comes an increasing need to understand and address the ways in which student trauma affects our education professionals. In a growing number of professions,...
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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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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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Sonoma County Trauma-Informed Teaching: Knowing our Students' Stories and Fostering Resilience
Sonoma County Office of Education published this bulletin that provides an overview of ACEs science, trauma in Sonoma County, trauma-informed teaching strategies, and building resilience for teachers and students. It's attached to this post, and also available for download in this group's resources for download section.
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State Funding: A Race to the Bottom (American Council on Education)
Many of us have experienced in the distant past, the reality that in the US if one worked hard, studied hard, did well in school, one could move up the "ladder of economic opportunity," even those of us who grew up in extreme poverty. For me personally, this reality was my hope (and my only source of resilience at the time) that I might be able to escape severe adversity, homelessness and foster care. My goal at that time, "I will never be like my parents." I was going to be someone...
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States Move to Add Native American History to Curriculum (usnews.com)
MINNEAPOLIS—ON THE heels of the National Indian Education Association's conference held in Minneapolis earlier this fall and just in time for Native American Heritage Month , the nearby Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community announced a $5 million philanthropic campaign to fund resources, curriculum, and training on Native American heritage for teachers and administrators across Minnesota , according to the Star Tribune . "We're hoping we can move the needle in the narrative in Minnesota and...
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STUDENT VOICE: ‘What haunts me is how easily everyone could picture us behind bars’ [hechingerreport.org]
In sixth grade, I went on a field trip to jail. Picture us: a bunch of Latino and African American kids sitting in a prison cell. I’ve never been able to shake the memory. Here I was, an 11-year-old Latina from Jersey City, and our teachers were telling us, dead straight: This could be your future. I certainly got the message. What haunts me is how easily everyone could picture us behind bars. We could picture it, too. When it came time for high school, my dad made the decision to move us to...
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Students Aren’t Learning About Slavery (usnews.com)
When it comes to the history of slavery in the U.S., the central role it played in shaping the country and its continued impact on race relations, students don't know much. In fact, only 8 percent of high school seniors can identify slavery as the central cause of the Civil War, according to a report released Thursday by the Southern Poverty Law Center . "It's important that everyone understand that slavery is truly at the foundation and formation of this nation," Hasan Kwame Jeffries,...
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Students More Likely To Eat School Breakfast When Given Extra Time (scienceblog.com)
Primary school students are more likely to eat a nutritional breakfast when given 10 extra minutes to do so, according to a new study by researchers at Virginia Tech and Georgia Southern University. The study, which is the first of its kind to analyze school breakfast programs, evaluated how students change their breakfast consumption when given extra time to eat in a school cafeteria. The study also compared results of these cafeteria breakfasts to results of serving in-classroom breakfasts...
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Study: Northern Utah schools disproportionately discipline students of color [Standard.net]
A study released in May by Voices for Utah Children found black, Hispanic and American Indian students have been disproportionately disciplined in schools throughout the state. The report looked at the 2013–14 school year and found 6 percent of all students of color received a disciplinary action, compared with 3 percent of their white counterparts. In Northern Utah area school districts, the Weber School District was among those to have higher-than-expected discipline rates for students of...
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Suspension, expulsion rates fall sharply in California, but racial and ethnic disparities remain [edsource.org]
School suspensions and expulsions in California public schools have dropped dramatically among all racial and ethnic groups over the past five years but a significant gap remains for African-American students, according to new state data released Wednesday. In the 2016-17 school year, the suspension rate of African-American students in California public schools was 9.8 percent. Still, that rate was significantly lower than it was in 2011-12, when the rate for African-American students was...
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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 Children About Tragedies & Other News Events [healthychildren.org]
After any disaster, parents and other adults struggle with what they should say and share with children and what not to say or share with them. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) encourages parents, teachers, child care providers, and others who work closely with children to filter information about the crisis and present it in a way that their child can accommodate, adjust to, and cope with. No matter what age or developmental stage the child is, parents can start by asking a child...
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Teaching 6-Year-Olds About Privilege and Power (kqed.org)
On a sunny day in April, I drove to Head-Royce School in the hills of Oakland, California, to join circle time in Bret Turner ’s first-grade classroom. I had asked Turner if I could sit in on some lessons after reading an article he wrote describing how he teaches about some surprising topics -- like race and class -- in an elementary school classroom. I wanted to see what that looked like and what kind of conversations first-graders at this private school would have around such complicated...
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Teaching Teenagers to Cope With Social Stress (nytimes.com)
Almost four million American teenagers have just started their freshman year of high school. Can they learn better ways to deal with all that stress and insecurity? New research suggests they can. Though academic and social pressures continue to pile on in high school, teenagers can be taught effective coping skills to skirt the pitfalls of anxiety and depression. David S. Yeager, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and a leading voice in the growing...
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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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Teenagers Say Depression and Anxiety Are Major Issues Among Their Peers (nytimes.com)
Most American teenagers — across demographic groups — see depression and anxiety as major problems among their peers, a new survey by the Pew Research Center found. The survey found that 70 percent of teenagers saw mental health as a big issue. Fewer teenagers cited bullying, drug addiction or gangs as major problems; those from low-income households were more likely to do so. Some psychologists have tied a growth in mental health issues among teenagers to increased social media use,...
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Thanks to One Mom, Schools Join the Farm-to-Table Movement (nationswell.com)
In New York’s Hudson Valley, farm-to-table food is no longer limited to upscale restaurants like Blue Hill Stone Barns. Because of mom Sandy McKelvey, fresh food grown on local farms is now bettering the fare in school cafeterias. The Farm-to-School movement took off in this rural, scenic region north of New York City in 2009, shortly after McKelvey and her family moved to Cold Spring Harbor. At her daughter’s new elementary school, she volunteered to introduce a new curriculum centered on a...
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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 Brain Science Is In: Students' Emotional Needs Matter (edweek.org)
Teachers, like parents, have always understood that children’s learning and growth do not occur in a vacuum, but instead at the messy intersection of academic, social, and emotional development. And they know that students’ learning is helped (or hindered) by the quality of students’ relationships and the contexts in which they live and learn. Working to weave those threads, skilled teachers often have yearned for schools—and policy approaches—that understand this complex reality. Such...
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The Deficit Lens of the 'Achievement Gap' Needs to Be Flipped. Here's How (edweek.org)
For too long, American schools have had a default orientation toward measuring students' abilities and achievement, rather than focusing on the resources-such as engaging learning environments and high-quality, culturally responsive teaching practices-that empower students to learn new concepts and skills. When data reveal students' shortcomings without revealing the shortcomings of the systems intended to serve them, it becomes easier to treat students as deficient and harder to recognize...
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The effect chronic stress has on children at school - and why policymakers should care [washingtonpost.com]
One of the most frustrating aspects of many school reforms efforts of the past several decades is the intense focus on test scores with far less attention, if any, on the personal experiences that students bring to the classroom and how those who have suffered chronic stress are affected. The rise of social-emotional learning in recent years has been seen as a move toward embracing the idea of dealing with the whole child in school, but many SEL programs don’t use trauma-informed...
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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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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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Native American Students Suspended at Higher Rates Than Peers. New Report Looks at Solutions [desertsun.com]
By Risa Johnson, Palm Springs Desert Sun, September 30, 2019 Native American students in California's public schools face higher-than-average suspension rates, according to a new report. A joint effort between California State University, San Diego, and the Sacramento Native American Higher Education Collaborative, the report outlines what it calls troubling trends regarding how school administrators discipline students. Racial disparities in school discipline, particularly for African...
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New documentary examines at-risk youth in US schools [MarketPlace.org]
The new documentary "The One That Got Away" takes a look at the tough problem of dealing with at-risk youth in American schools. In the feature, Dan Gill, a teacher at Glenfield Middle School in Montclair, New Jersey, reconnects with his former student, Tourrie Moses. Moses is serving prison time for manslaughter and aggravated assault. One of the documentary's co-producers, Steve McCarthy, joined us to talk about the work. [For more of this story, written by David Brancaccio, go to ...
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New Elementary and Secondary Education Law Includes Specific “Trauma-Informed Practices” Provisions
Legislation to replace the 14 year-old No Child Left Behind law—The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) signed by President Obama on Dec. 10—was widely praised by the administration, legislators of both parties in the House and Senate, and the organizations concerned about education policy from the NEA to the Education Trust. The consensus is that the bill is not perfect but provides a needed recalibration of federal authority over the states in education policy while protecting...
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New Guidance on Trauma Screening in Schools
In partnership with the Defending Childhood State Policy Initiative and the National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice, new guidance has been released on trauma screening in schools. Importantly, this document lays out a series of important considerations when determining whether trauma screening is indicated in each context, and how to go about collecting and utilizing the data generated from the process. Please feel free to share input.
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New Research on Community Schools Is Prompting New School Improvement Partnerships
The Center for American Progress (CAP) has a long history of advocating for test-driven, market-driven school reforms. I doubt that the CAP is ready to abandon its belief that better instruction, leadership, data-driven accountability, and choice can drive systemic improvement in the highest-poverty schools, but a recent panel discussion, which was aired on CSPAN , indicates that it is open to social and cognitive science research which argues for a more holistic approach to school...
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New Research Suggests Practical Ways to Make School Discipline, Access Equitable [blogs.edweek.org]
Sometimes small changes in how school districts approach policy—including how behaviors are labeled, which interventions schools are offered, and how teachers are trained to use them—can help break down the school-to-prison pipeline and put disadvantaged students on a better academic trajectory. In a symposium here at the annual meeting of the American Association of Educational Research, civil rights experts discussed practical ways that states and districts can reduce discipline...
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New Resource Guide for Child Sexual Abuse/Exploitation Prevention
Greetings, ACN Community! I wanted to share this fantastic new resource guide developed by one of the work groups from the Georgia Statewide Human Trafficking Task Force. This guide provides background on best practice, principles of prevention, identifying resources for the classroom, developing a prevention plan, age appropriate teaching suggestions, analysis of specific programs, and guidelines for implementation and evaluation. It is really quite thorough and is full of excellent ideas...
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New Safety Measures in Broward Schools Make Even Children Sick
School safety has been a major concern in Broward County Public Schools since the bloody Valentine’s Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. As a result of hard work of BCPS superintendent Robert Runcie (who, by the way, has recently received a “highly effective” evaluation for his outstanding performance and has been given a raise) new strategies have been implemented to ensure safety on BCPS campuses across the county. First and foremostly, all BCPS students...
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New York public schools to have 'Meatless Mondays' starting this fall (cnn.com)
Students often joke about the "mystery meat" in their school lunches. Well for kids in New York City, there won't be any mystery at all, at least on Mondays. That's because all public schools in New York will have "Meatless Mondays" in the 2019-2020 school year. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio introduced the new meal program Monday. Meatless Mondays, which will provide students with all-vegetarian breakfast and lunch offerings, is being expanded citywide from a pilot program that was tried out...
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Non-White School Districts Get $23 Billion Less Funding than White Ones [psmag.com]
In the United States today approximately 12.8 million students—or 27 percent of all those in school—attend school in a district in which over 75 percent of students are non-white. In a new report , researchers at EdBuild , a non-profit that analyzes school-funding issues, calculate that these students are getting dramatically shortchanged on the school-funding front. The majority of racially concentrated, non-white districts are also low-income. Poor, non-white districts educate about 20...
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Nowhere to Hide the Elephant in the [Class]room
Developmental trauma changes the architecture of the physical brain, ability to learn and social behavior. It impacts two out of three children, but I didn’t even know what it was…
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Nursing Summit on ACES - April 12 in New York State (Incl. School Nurses)
This full-day program is presented by the Catskill Hudson Area Health Education Center's Nursing Workforce Development Workgroup in coordination with leadership of State University of New York - Delhi School of Nursing. The purpose of this program is to provide an educational forum for practicing nurses and school nurses to discuss Adverse Childhood Experiences and the potential effects they can contribute to long-term, adverse health-related issues. The NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing...
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Benefits of early childhood education persist into high school, study says [scpr.org]
Participation in high-quality early childhood education has persistent effects on academic performance and might save a lot of money for school districts, according to a new study out Thursday. The study, from the American Educational Research Association , found long-lasting payoffs in three areas: increased high school graduation rates, reduced special education placement and reduced instances of grade retention. "Those are important outcomes," said Greg Duncan, professor of education at...
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Bill introduced in Maine to prohibit corporal punishment in schools
Maine is one of 22 states in the U.S. where corporal punishment is allowed in schools. That would change if LD 527, an act to prohibit corporal punishment , is enacted. Fifteen of the 22 states expressly permit corporal punishment—the other seven (including Maine) do not prohibit it. There are 28 states and the District of Columbia that expressly prohibit corporal punishment. Some of the 110,000 students subjected to corporal punishment are in states where it is prohibited. The Maine bill...
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Black Minds Matter (teachingtolerance.org)
Black people, including youth, are less likely to receive adequate care for mental health issues for a number of reasons: disparities in access to care, stigma about mental illness and lack of culturally competent mental health practitioners. According to a study published in the International Journal of Health Services , black children are about half as likely as white children to get mental health treatment. As the CBC task force, mental health experts and policy makers mull over ideas to...
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Black students and families need more support — and they need it now. An unprecedented coalition dives in with a new LAUSD task force. [laschoolreport.com]
An unprecedented coalition of community members, educators, parents, and students at LA Unified have convened a new task force to urgently address why African-American youth continue to have the lowest test scores and why black students and families continue to feel ignored by the education system. Black students persist in having LA Unified’s highest rates of dropouts and suspensions. They are most likely to be identified as needing special education services, and they are least likely to...
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Brain Development and Academic Achievement
"As much as 20% of the gap in test scores could be explained by maturational lags in the frontal and temporal lobes. ... The influence of poverty on children’s learning and achievement is mediated by structural brain development. To avoid...
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Building a Resilient Community (United Way of East Central Iowa)
ACES: Building a Resilient Community Childhood trauma has affected the majority of people in our community. Specific family problems as well as child abuse and neglect (summarized as Adverse Childhood Experience, or ACEs) have been shown...
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California State board rethinking how to measure performance of alternative schools [Edsource.org]
State law recognizes that schools primarily serving expelled students, dropouts and students who had trouble coping in traditional schools should be held accountable for academic performance – but by different measurements. This month, the California State Board of Education began a more than year-long process to determine what those metrics should be, which schools should be measured by them and how the schools should fit into the larger system of accountability and school improvement the...