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By Bryan Amaro, Photo: Unsplash, University of San Diego, Digital USD, May 28, 2022 Background and Significance Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) have been well-studied for over 20 years, with the seminal research performed in San Diego, CA, through Kaiser Permanente and MD internist Vince Felitti in 1998. ACEs are potentially traumatic events that occur during childhood before 18 years of age (Felitti et al., 1998). The stress response is a normal part of life, and is the bodies response...

Harvard University is committing $100 million to study and redress its ties to slavery, the university’s president announced Tuesday, and with that money will create an endowed “Legacy of Slavery Fund,” which will continue researching and memorializing that history, working with descendants of Black and Native American people enslaved at Harvard, as well as their broader communities. With the announcement, Harvard joins many other universities — including Brown, Georgetown and Princeton...

Prison is supposed to serve two purposes: punishment and rehabilitation. But often prisoners emerge with the skills to be a better criminal and little knowledge on how to live an improved life. A prison in California is hoping to change the revolving door effect for some inmates by being the first to have a fully accredited junior college behind bars. At Mount Tamalpais College at San Quentin State Prison inmates can earn an Associate of Arts degree by taking classes in literature, American...

The program will connect survivors of sexual assault with forensic interviewers, instead of assigning the work to police officers who don’t have specialized trauma training. The Harris County District Attorney’s office has partnered with seven universities and the Texas Forensic Nurse Examiners to provide trauma-informed care to survivors of sexual assault at colleges and universities. The DA’s office reallocated $165,829 in forfeiture money to fund the initiative, which will connect...

Dr. Janice Carello and Dr. Phyllis Thompson have edited a collection of essays regarding trauma informed higher educational perspectives and practices especially as attuned to pandemic/post-pandemic. A very welcome addition indeed to the conversation and scholarship regarding trauma informed higher ed! "This collection presents strategies for trauma-informed teaching and learning in higher education during crisis. While studies abound on trauma-informed approaches for mental health service...

Collective efficacy occurs when teachers in a school believe that, as a team, they have the power to help their students learn more effectively—and this belief is based on their own shared experiences of success. A culture of collective efficacy does not simply happen; it is built intentionally. I have learned this in my work at Lead by Learning , a nonprofit connected with the Mills College School of Education that partners with schools and districts to foster collective efficacy. At the...

Shelley Paul and Jill Gough had heard that doodling while taking notes could help improve memory and concept retention, but as instructional coaches they were reluctant to bring the idea to teachers without trying it out themselves first. To give it a fair shot, Paul tried sketching all her notes from a two-day conference. By the end, her drawings had improved and she was convinced the approach could work for kids, too. “It causes you to listen at a different level,” said Jill Gough,...

Research is uncovering the benefits of recognizing that you might be wrong, who tends to be more humble, and some hints about how to cultivate this skill. Research on the overconfidence bias shows that people regularly overestimate their abilities, knowledge, and beliefs. For example, when researchers ask people how certain they are that their answers to questions of fact are correct, people’s confidence consistently exceeds the actual accuracy of their answers. Psychologist Scott Plous has...

Discussions about Indigenizing the academy have abounded in Canada over the past few years. And yet, despite the numerous policies and reports that have been written, there is a lack of clarity around what pedagogical methods could help to decolonize our institutions. In Sharing Breath: Embodied Learning and Decolonization , edited by Sheila Batacharya and Yuk-Lin Renita Wong, contributors demonstrate how the academy cannot be decolonized while we still subscribe to the Western idea of mind...

Established in 2006 by Dr. Debbie Reese of Nambé Pueblo, American Indians in Children's Literature (AICL) provides critical analysis of Indigenous peoples in children's and young adult books. Dr. Jean Mendoza joined AICL as a co-editor in 2016. Please visit the website by clicking here, https://americanindiansinchild.../best-books.html?m=1 American Indians in Children's Literature is used by Native and non-Native parents, librarians, teachers, editors, professors, and students. It is...

By Sarah Larson, The New Yorker, October 25, 2021 I n August, Brené Brown, the Houston-based writer, researcher, professor, social worker, podcast host, C.E.O., and consultant-guru to organizations including Pixar, Google, and the U.S. Special Forces, met with a group of graduate students at the McCombs School of Business, at the University of Texas at Austin, to talk about emotions. Brown, fifty-five, was wearing a shiny maize blouse, jeans, and a black face mask. It was the first day of...

By Anna Varela, Georgia State University News Hub, October 19, 2021 Georgia State University’s Gerontology Institute has received a $1.58 million grant to support training nursing home staff across the state to improve care for residents with dementia. The training will emphasize new trauma-informed approaches and reducing the use of antipsychotic drugs to manage residents’ symptoms. The three-year project, jointly funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the...