Tagged With "Innovation High School"
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Next "A Better Normal" community discussion series: Tuesday, April 28, 2020 — Health equity and historical trauma
There are two "Better Normal" community discussions this week, on Tuesday and on Thursday. On Tuesday, Ingrid Cockhren, ACEs Connection community facilitator and DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) expert returns to continue the discussing health equity during the COVID-19 pandemic. On Thursday, Lara Kain will lead another education "Better Normal".
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Parenting Students Get Extra Help During Remote Learning (learn4life.org)
Every year, 25,000 teens give birth in California – and 70 percent of teen moms don’t graduate high school. About 1,300 of Learn4Life students are pregnant or parenting, so we are doing everything we can to keep these young mothers engaged in school and learning parenting skills – even during remote learning. Before COVID-19 forced remote learning, parenting teens could bring their babies to school while they studied and took tests. A separate child-friendly area ensured they didn’t disrupt...
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Poetry in Motion: Drama Lit Team Preps for Spring Slams By Elisa Knoell Learn4Life Student
Imagine the power of putting a handful of kids together in a class to tell their stories in their own words—and earn credits in the process. This school year, Learn4Life’s Innovation High School (IHS) San Diego – Lakeside is offering a spoken word poetry course titled “Dramatic Literature”. The course engages youth in classic works of literature and empowers teens to take charge of their own futures and unearth their potential. Annabelle Reyes, a Drama Lit student, told how beneficial the...
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Practicing the pause: addressing tensions in widening the Window of Tolerance
Learning to be less reactive to environmental and/or psychological trauma triggers is supported by practicing the pause within a reparative relationship, which ideally acts as both a container and a scaffold. What this means is that emotional distress is seen, held and understood by supporting partner as a preface to being able to find safety within our own skin...
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Promising Research on Mindfulness for Kids (eomega.org)
Mindfulness trains our brains to respond in ways we choose instead of always in a default manner, which often is a knee-jerk reaction from the reptilian part of the brain. This is especially pertinent in situations that bring up stress or conflict. For instance, if a child has learned to use violence to react to feeling scared, mindfulness can help him or her become aware of this habitual behavior and the feelings underneath it, and ultimately rewire the reaction to a constructive and...
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Reframing Undesired Behaviors as an Aspect of Learning, not Punishment
At the Chula Vista, National City, and Linda Vista resource centers of Learn4Life Innovation High School San Diego, only four students were suspended during the 2016-17 school year – less than 1 percent of the student population of more than 500 students. For the leadership team and staff at Innovation High School this rate was still too high. The team and staff embraced further training on restorative practices, positive behavior supports and interventions in order to better support student...
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Report: Teachers Have Difficulty Engaging Families (thejournal.com)
In a recent survey involving 1,000 primary teachers conducted by ed tech company ClassTag , 45 percent of respondents said more than a quarter of families were “hard to reach and engage,” with 21 percent saying that more than half of their families were hard to engage. However, according to the report, The State of Parent Engagement , parents tend to think that teachers do a good job of communicating. Some 39 percent rated teachers as having good communication, rating them at 9 to 10 points...
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Seeking Workshop Presenters for 2020 Conference for Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools
Do you have specialized expertise in trauma-informed care and education? Has your school taken the journal toward becoming trauma-sensitive ? The Attachment & Trauma Network (ATN) is looking for workshop presenters from a variety of backgrounds: educators (at all levels), counselors, social workers, clinicians, community leaders and others to present at our 2020 conference, February 16-18, 2020 in Atlanta, GA. You will be speaking at the LARGEST gathering of trauma-informed educators in...
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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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Simple Tips for Boosting Teacher Resilience (edutopia.org)
Try these quick and easy ways to build resilience and relieve stress. STRATEGIES FOR MANAGING DAILY STRESS Sing a song. Perhaps during your morning shower or while you’re driving to school, belt out a high-energy song that you find empowering. My latest favorite is Pink’s “ I Am Here .” This tactic works because it makes you use your full lung capacity, and breathing deep is energizing—and there’s research on the positive impact of listening to music. Time needed: four minutes. Eat a handful...
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SOURCE Seminar Helps Learn4Life Students Thrive
Students of Unity, Respect, Consciousness and Empowerment (S.O.U.R.C.E.) is a seminar offered at Learrn4Life’s Innovation High School National City and Chula Vista resource centers that promotes empowerment, resiliency building, and leadership skills. Students engage in the seminar using project-based learning where they are tasked with creating a public service announcement. This exercise gives students a platform to voice their needs and explore issues that are relevant to them. It also...
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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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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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TEACHER VOICE: Breaking the school-to-prison pipeline with ‘windows and mirrors’ for black boys [hechingerreport.org]
The connection I’m building with my students starts every day with a box of Cocoa Puffs. Name-brand cereal may not sound all that special, but it’s something most of my students can’t afford. It’s something I remember longing for when I was a kid. Even though our school serves breakfast in the classroom to all students, I bring a group of boys from our K-4 school together for a special breakfast to fuel their day with a dose of self-esteem. We eat and we talk, and they get to start their day...
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Teachers notice rise in homelessness among kids (calmatters.org)
Nationwide, public schools identified 1.5 million children experiencing homelessness in the 2017-2018 school year, an increase of 11% from the previous school year, according to a report released in January by the National Center for Homeless Education (NCHE). A small portion of those students are living in unsheltered situations, such as cars, parks, streets or bus stations, a segment that more than doubled from the previous school year. Homeless students in emergency shelters or...
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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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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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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 Focus Room: A Calming, Welcoming Space to Restore Receptivity and Readiness to Learn
As part of the Trauma Informed approach to instruction, the staff at Learn4Life Innovation High School recently created a Focus Room at the National City resource center. The Focus Room provides a space to facilitate restorative processes for students who need a break to refocus or who are not meeting school expectations. In this space, staff assist students and guide them to redirect, recover, and/or return to an internal state conducive to learning. Students can request to use the room or...
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ACEs Science Champions Series: Training future counselors to integrate ACEs science in the classroom
Nemia with peacock used in therapy with children. Talking with an animal is often easier than talking with an adult for a child who's experienced abuse. _________________________________________ Toni Nemia, program and clinical director for the University of San Francisco Child and Family Center's School-Based Family Counseling, says that her graduate students are often surprised to hear that ACEs science (adverse childhood experiences) has an international reach. In fact, Scotland is an...
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Trauma-Responsive Schools Conference in Southern California
HERE this NOW is proud to bring its Trauma-Responsive Schools Conference to California, October 23 – 25, 2019, at the stunning Temecula Creek Inn in Temecula, CA (2 hours north of San Diego; 3-hours south of Los Angeles). This is not a typical conference. Participants will be actively engaged in an immersive experience, rendering more growth - personal and professional. Five diversely skilled and experienced pioneers of trauma-informed schools change are coming together for first time, to...
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Two Parkland Suicides Highlight the Lasting Impact of Trauma. Here's How Parents and Teachers Can Help Teens Who Are Struggling [time.com]
A pair of recent suicide deaths in Parkland, Fla., serve as a stark reminder of the lingering effects of trauma — and underscore the importance of providing long-term support to those who are living with its consequences. Just days after 19-year-old Sydney Aiello, who survived the mass shooting at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year, died by suicide , police confirmed that an unnamed current student at the high school had also died by “apparent suicide .” Police did not...
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What Happens When Schools Close for the Academic Year? tcpress.com]
By Karen Gross, Teachers College Press, March 20, 2020 Just as we are hearing about positive research efforts to combat the coronavirus in the relative near term, we are learning that some statewide school systems may stay closed through the end of the 2019–2020 school year. As of this writing, one state—Kansas—has affirmatively closed all its schools until the next academic year. Other states will likely follow in the coming days, including California, Arizona and Texas. The critical...
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Why It's Vital for Native Students to Learn With a Culturally Relevant Lens (kqed.org)
Sometimes Armando Ortiz looks back at his life and can hardly believe where he is today. He grew up in White Center, just south of Seattle, and at a pretty early age got involved in gang life and hanging out with people who were getting into trouble. He says much of his early educational life felt like he was being passed along from one grade to the next, no one paying much attention to whether he was learning or not. He decided to attend Highline Big Picture High School in Seattle to get...
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Why We Can't Afford Whitewashed Social-Emotional Learning (ascd.org)
Social-emotional learning (SEL) skills can help us build communities that foster courageous conversations across difference so that our students can confront injustice, hate, and inequity. SEL refers to the life skills that support people in experiencing, managing, and expressing emotions, making sound decisions, and fostering interpersonal relationships. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) defines five core SEL competencies , including self-awareness,...
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12 Myths of the Science of ACEs
The two biggest myths about ACEs science are: MYTH #1 — That it’s just about the 10 ACEs in the ACE Study — the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study . It’s about sooooo much more than that. MYTH #2 — And that it’s just about ACEs…adverse childhood experiences. These two myths are intertwined. The ACE Study issued the first of its 70+ publications in 1998, and for many people it was the lightning bolt, the grand “aha” moment, the unexpected doorway into a blazing new...
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14 Tips For Helping Students With Limited Internet Have Distance Learning (kqed.org)
Schools across the nation are closing in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19 and in the scramble to provide at-home learning, a major problem has risen to the forefront: millions of American students don’t have reliable access to the internet. According to recent federal data , approximately 14 percent of U.S. families with school-age children lack high-speed internet. Most of those families are low-income or live in rural areas. While there are plenty of best practice guides availabe...
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ACEs Science in Education: The Next Big Challenge is Systems Change #ACEsCon2018
One of the first sessions of the 2018 ACEs Conference: Action to Access discussed the barriers and opportunities for increasing access in the field of education. The main question was: "How can one achieve systematic changes within the field of education?" The session was moderated by Michelle Flowers, a passionate advocate, and the principal of Kinney High in Rancho Cordova, CA, which is part of the Folsom Cordova Unified School District. It included a dynamic and diverse panel of education...
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Animated videos help teachers build sense of empathy in students [EdSource.org]
A Silicon Valley educational technology company and researchers from Harvard have teamed up to launch a new series of animated videos next month about the importance of empathy , intended for teachers to use in building students’ social and emotional skills. Developed by ClassDojo’s Big Ideas program and researchers at the Making Caring Common project at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, the series of three short videos, called “Empathy,” are the latest manifestation of a push to move...
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Announcing a New Resource for Educators: Greater Good in Education (greatergood.berkeley.edu)
Find research-based practices for kinder, happier schools on our new Greater Good in Education website. The fields of social-emotional learning (SEL), mindfulness, ethical development, and other prosocially oriented forms of education have emerged to help support and guide teachers’ efforts to transform education. We here at the Greater Good Science Center’s Education Program would like to offer our support as well with the launch of our new website, Greater Good in Education (GGIE). GGIE...
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Blended Learning Built on Teacher Expertise (edutopia.org)
An inside look at a teacher-designed instructional model that combines blended learning, student self-pacing, and mastery-based grading. DEVISING A NEW TEACHING MODEL In an effort to redesign my classroom around my students’ diverse needs, I developed a scalable instructional model built around three core principles. 1. Blended instruction: Most blended learning models involve outsourcing the creation of digital content. In the model I developed and then shared with other teachers at my...
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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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Compassion-Based Strategies for Managing Classroom Behavior (kqed.org)
When Grace Dearborn started her career teaching high school students, she felt confident about how to teach but unprepared for managing behavior in her classroom. During more challenging disciplinary moments with students, she used her angry voice with them, thinking that would work. Instead, on one occasion, an escalated situation led to a student following her around the classroom for 15 minutes while she was teaching until security could come to escort the student out of the class.
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Controlled Burn: A Story of Growth (ascd.org)
My nephew Max (a pseudonym) started skipping school when he was a high school freshman. He did enough to get by, coming home with C 's and D 's on his report cards, but he continued to skip school no matter what anyone did to try to get him to be a "better" student. He not only skipped classes on a regular basis, he skipped studying. He certainly didn't do his homework. His teachers pushed and prodded, his family begged and scolded. If you ask him now, Max says that to him, school seemed...
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Despite Prevalent Trauma, From School Shootings to the Opioid Epidemic, Few States Have Policies to Fully Address Student Needs, Study Finds (the74million.org)
Despite the pervasive effect of stressful experiences — from mass school shootings to the opioid epidemic — on student performance, only 11 states encourage or require staff training on the effects of trauma. Half of states have policies on suicide prevention. And just one state, Vermont, requires a school nurse to be available daily at every school campus. Those are among the key findings of a report released Thursday by the nonprofit Child Trends, which found that most states have failed...
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Distance Learning During Coronavirus Worsens Race, Class Inequality in Education (teenvogue.com)
Abruptly shifting much of the U.S. education system online in the middle of a pandemic was never going to be easy. But for students of color at some of the country’s largest school districts, the practical, technical, and emotional challenges are far more acute. Their lack of reliable internet access and technology is only the tip of the iceberg. Students told Teen Vogue they’re growing anxious as relatives are laid off and bills mount. Mixed-status families are being left out of relief...
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Dr. Tian Dayton: 'A Better Normal' community discussion on 4.7.20 Zoom
This week, we're hosting 'A Better Normal' discussions on Tuesday, April 7; Thursday, April 9; and Friday, April 10, 2020....12 pm PT/ 1 pm MT/ 2 pm CT/ 3 pm ET. Tuesday, April 7, 2020 Therapist and author Dr. Tian Dayton, who first started writing about ACEs science more than 20 years ago, will address grief and maintaining emotional sobriety during COVID-19. (See more about Dayton below.) Alison Cebula, Northeastern regional community facilitator, and Carey Sipp, Southeast community...
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Editorial: Three things California must do for successful K-12 distance learning during coronavirus crisis (sandiegouniontribune.com)
The decision by districts across California to shut K-12 schools last month to slow the spread of coronavirus remains a smart and practical move that aligned with other “social distancing” measures to keep virus deaths at a lower level than in other states — and to allow health-care providers more time to prepare for a projected onslaught of patients. But besides managing the public health crisis, leaders in San Diego and statewide also face another huge challenge: the need to make online...
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Expert Resource for Future of Education After COVID-19 [prnewswire.com]
By Learn4Life, PR Newswire, April 13, 2020 How will education forever be changed after COVID-19? Dr. Caprice Young , national superintendent of schools for Learn4Life , is available to discuss how this disruption to education may be a good time to examine inadequate policies and practices that have been largely unchallenged – and that often hurt disadvantaged students. Learn4Life is a nonprofit network of schools that serves at-risk high school students and former dropouts through a flexible...
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Foster Students at Learn4Life Graduating at Rates Higher Than the California State Average (learn4life.org)
Foster youth face multiple obstacles that make it hard to succeed in high school. According to the National Foster Youth Institute , only about half of the nation’s youth raised in foster care end up finishing high school. As such, Learn4Life identified the challenges and solutions for this student population and set up a needs-based support team. Over the past three years, Learn4Life has doubled its foster student graduation rate to 77 percent in the 2018-19 school year, exceeding the...
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Get Lit Program at Learn4Life Charter Schools Ignites Passion for Poetry while Mending Hearts and Souls
Learn4Life students in Fresno carry hardship and experience trauma, many of them without ever having the opportunity to process what they have been through, let alone heal. The Get Lit program focuses on taking those personal traumas and turning them into poetry, giving students a voice and the confidence to use it. The trauma that Learn4Life students have analyzed in the class include issues with disabilities, mental and physical illnesses, physical and mental abuse, drug and alcohol...
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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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Helping Students Overcome Toxic Stress through Science-Based Teaching Practices (stresshealth.org)
“What our students really crave the most is predictability from the adults interacting with them,” says Roger Sapp, a student success teacher at KIPP. For that reason, the one-on-one session is not a reward for being “good” or withheld if something bad happens. The kids who need it can count on it – every day. The scene is from a video by Edutopia (aka the George Lucas Educational Foundation), which has produced a series of more than 20 powerful, engaging shorts on how children learn in...
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Helping Teachers Manage the Weight of Trauma (harvard.edu)
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. In a growing number of professions, including firefighters, law enforcement, trauma doctors and nurses, child welfare workers, and therapists and case managers, it is now understood that working with...
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Here’s How a Trauma-Informed Approach to Remote Teaching Can Help Students Succeed (educationpost.org)
Many students have had difficulties in life and have struggled to keep up in traditional high school. They have endured challenges such as homelessness, foster care, hunger, abuse, bullying, illness and even human trafficking. Eighty percent are low-income, many are pregnant or parenting teens, and most enroll with us after dropping out, more than a year behind in credits, and reading at lower than a fifth grade level. All school leaders can educate teachers on a trauma-informed approach to...
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How Daily Farm Work and Outdoor Projects Make Learning in High School Better for Teens (kqed.org)
Called the Telstar Freshman Academy, or TFA, it involves all its district’s ninth graders in a hands-on learning method that uses outdoor-based projects and community-building activities as ways to teach across several disciplines. The program is aimed at helping students feel connected to each other and their community in a place where — as in so many rural areas hit hard by the opioid epidemic and the 2008 recession — connectedness and a shared sense of purpose have been in short supply.
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How Mastery-Based Learning Can Help Students of Every Background Succeed (kqed.org)
At New York City’s Urban Assembly Maker Academy high school in lower Manhattan, two things immediately stand out. First, its teachers are rarely standing at the front of the classroom dispensing facts and figures for students to dutifully transcribe. Instead, they’re constantly on the move, going from table to table facilitating group discussions and providing feedback as students work. Second, the students reflect the racial diversity of the city . Within one of the nation’s most segregated...
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How School Closures Can Strengthen Your Family (greatergood.berkeley.edu)
Here in the U.S., millions of families are dealing with school closures. The number of students around the world whose education has been interrupted by the coronavirus is approaching 400 million, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. As closed schools ramp up for online learning, we can retool in our families, too. Here are three practical ways families can cope—and even thrive—despite school closures, event cancellations, and a whole lot more...
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In professional development for online teachers, highlighting failure led the way to success (hechingerreport.org)
The Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township, on the west side of Indianapolis, has gotten a fair amount of attention for personalizing the professional development it gives to teachers in its virtual high school and blended learning programs. The fact that voluntary professional development can attract 90 percent of teachers is seen as a wild success. It’s that success the district, and by extension, Michele Eaton, its director of virtual and blended learning, has been known for.
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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,...