Tagged With "parenting support"
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Parent Handouts updated and available In Dari, English & Spanish
The updated parent handouts are now available in Spanish as well as English and Dari. Here's the blog post with links to all three versions of each flyer. All versions of the Understanding ACEs and Parenting to Prevent & Heal ACEs parent handouts can be downloaded, distributed, and used freely. Both flyers were made with generous support from Family Hui, a Program of Lead for Tomorrow, who is responsible for making the Spanish and Dari translations available. These are updates of the...
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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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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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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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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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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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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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A Trauma-Informed Approach to Teaching Through Coronavirus [tolerance.org]
Experts from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network share their recommendations for educators supporting students during the COVID-19 crisis. By TEACHING TOLERANCE STAFF MARCH 23, 2020 L ast week, as schools across the nation closed their doors to slow the spread of the coronavirus, TT reached out to our community to learn what support you needed at this time. Among the most common responses was a call for trauma-informed practices to support students over the coming weeks and months.
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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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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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Dear Educators, Let Them Know You’re Scared (edsurge.com)
These intrusive thoughts are neither productive nor personal. We wear them on our faces. They show up in our classrooms. As educators, we need to support our students and ourselves to be safe. How do we create a culture of safety and embrace our common humanity? Let them know you’re scared. The images from Denver . The stories from UNC-Charlotte . The recent media coverage of active shooter drills in our children’s schools. The devastating reports of continued trauma in the wake of Parkland.
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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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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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How California’s Rural Education Network Is Creating an Online Hub to Better Connect Remote Schools and Empower Teachers to Share Experiences, Strategies & Classroom Materials (the74million.org)
Educators in rural communities face unique challenges, but they also have special strengths that aren’t always found in urban and suburban schools. In California,where 60 percent of districts are in towns or rural areas, a new project is leveraging those strengths to help educators connect with one another and get the support they need. The California Rural Ed Network started in 2017 but recently launched an online resource bank that offers free informational and professional development...
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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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Launching a Revolution (Harvard Public Health)
"Ultimately, she wants all primary care—for both children and adults—to be “trauma-informed care.” “One basic of trauma-informed care is having the entire clinical team trained to support patient safety, confidentiality, and privacy, in order to avoid triggering or retraumatizing patients. Another basic is supporting and connecting patients and families to resources. And another is understanding the principles of self-care,” she says. Ideally, every pediatric or primary-care practice would...
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Learn4Life Trauma-Informed Journey
Please see attached for the trauma-informed journey presentation given by Craig Beswick for Learn4Life on 9/07/18.
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How to Practice More Compassion at Work During COVID-19 and Beyond (thriveglobal.com)
In this time of great uncertainty in the world, a new approach to leadership is needed: one that recognizes the paramount importance of compassion . As workers face new challenges they’ve never encountered before, expressions of empathy from leaders — as well as other colleagues — have been critical to employee well-being and productivity. And as stay-at-home orders lift and more companies open their doors to their workforce, offering kindness and support to teammates is key to a smoother...
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ACEs Connection launches Cooperative of Communities
The ACEs Connection Cooperative of Communities launches today. We want to continue to contribute to the ACEs movement for as long as it takes to create a worldwide healing-centered culture based on ACEs science. We want that to take hold in this world in the same way electricity has — we only notice it if it isn’t there.
First, a clarification: Nothing on ACEsConnection.com changes! Membership remains free! Everything our current 300+ communities use stays free, and remains free for new ones.
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Teachers Are Anxious and Overwhelmed. They Need SEL Now More Than Ever. (edsurge.com)
At the end of March, our team at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence , along with our colleagues at the Collaborative for Social Emotional and Academic Learning , known as CASEL, launched a survey to unpack the emotional lives of teachers during the COVID-19 crisis. In the span of just three days, over 5,000 U.S. teachers responded to the survey. We asked them to describe, in their own words, the three most frequent emotions they felt each day. The five most-mentioned feelings among...
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Students speak out: California educators host first-ever statewide talk about institutional racism [sfchronicle.com]
By Brett Simpson, San Francisco Chronicle, June 18, 2020 On Wednesday afternoon, over 300 California educators, parents, and students tuned into Facebook Live to hear high school students speak honestly about their own experiences of racism, implicit bias, and trauma at school. The “ Student Support Circle: Institutional Racism and Implicit Bias ,” was co-hosted by the California Department of Education and the National Equity Project, and is the first among several initiatives state...
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California reaches milestone with ACEs initiatives pulsing in all 58 counties. Next: All CA cities.
Karen Clemmer, the Northwest community facilitator with ACEs Connection, was already deeply interested in the CDC/Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study when she and a colleague from the Child Parent Institute were invited to lunch by ACEs Connection founder and publisher Jane Stevens in 2012. But that lunch meeting changed everything. Karen Clemmer “Jane helped us see a bigger world,” says Clemmer. “She came with a much wider lens. She didn’t look only at Sonoma County, she...
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Offset trauma for students by promoting positive experiences (exclusive.multibriefs.com)
When Christina Bethell was little, she lived in a low-income housing complex in Los Angeles where her neighbor, a quiet lady the kids called Mrs. Raccoon, always had her door open for the neighborhood kids. Every Saturday she threw a little tea party with candy to celebrate any child with a birthday that week. Bethell fondly remembers the woman’s kindness as source of comfort during her challenging childhood. Dr. Bethell, now a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public...
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Three simple ways to mitigate stress and practice self-care (medium.com/@ClintonFdn)
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to create anxiety and uneasiness and impact people’s mental health and overall well-being, a Clinton Foundation partner shares her expertise and resilience-building strategies to use during uncertain or challenging times. This blog post was written by Dana Brown, Organizational Liaison, ACEs Connection. Dana is an ACEs Science Statewide Facilitator, and through the organization, Learn4Life, she works within the Trauma-Informed Work Group and Steering...
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Partnership with HBCUs Helps At-risk Students Realize Their Dreams of Higher Education (learn4life.org)
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are known for helping students of color and opportunity youth access an affordable and quality higher education. Realizing that high SAT scores and GPAs aren’t necessarily indicators of student success in college, HBCUs instead focus on developing learners through personalized learning and support. Learn4Life and FLEX High serve at-risk students and share this approach to recover dropouts, and promote college access, readiness and...
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Webinar: Leveling up Google Classroom for Distance Learning (nea.org)
Don’t miss the next installment of our Mastering Distance Learning Webinar Series! Next up: Learn about how to maximize Google Classroom for remote teaching and learning purposes with embedded opportunities for social emotional learning, more complex assignments, interactive learning environments, tools for one-on-one student support, and opportunities to differentiate practice to fit your students' needs. September 28th from 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm PDT Register HERE.
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How Parents Can Support Children With Special Needs During Distance Learning (greatergood.berkeley.edu)
Parenting a child with additional learning, attention, social-emotional, or behavioral needs has never been easy—and it’s not exactly getting easier. Distance learning and hybrid learning have created a whole new layer of challenge for the approximately 7.1 million children who receive special education services in American schools. Here are the three most common challenges I have been seeing for children with special needs—and what parents can do when they see these challenges at home. “My...
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New Resource: Coping with Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic One-Pager (English & Spanish!)
English: The California Department of Public Health, Injury and Prevention Branch (CDPH/IVPB) and the California Department of Social Service, Office of Child Abuse Prevention’s (CDSS/OCAP) , Essentials for Childhood (EfC) Initiative , ACEs Connection , and the Yolo County Children’s Alliance have co-created a newly developed resource, “Coping with Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic” in both English and Spanish. This material is intended for Californian families experiencing the severe...
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The Pandemic Is Raging. Here's How to Support Your Grieving Students [edweek.org]
By Brittany R. Collins, Education Week, November 12, 2020 Over the past few decades, trauma-informed teaching has gained ground in the United States, yet rarely is grief included in the conversation. In the midst of a global pandemic, with teachers and students confronting loss in and outside the classroom in new and myriad ways, it is more critical than ever to apply a grief-sensitive lens to our conversations about curricula and trauma in the school system. We are not the people we were a...
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Relationships with Caring Adults and Social and Emotional Strengths Are Related to High School Academic Achievement [childtrends.org]
By Vanessa Sacks, Rebecca M. Jones, and Hannah Rackers, et al., Child Trends, December 15, 2020 youthCONNECT is an integrated student supports initiative, developed by Venture Philanthropy Partners (VPP), that is being implemented in Prince George’s County, Maryland, in partnership with the Prince George’s County government and Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS). At Suitland High School, the youthCONNECT theory of change posits that providing college and career preparation...
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A Guide to Practicing Self-Care with Mindfulness (mindful.org)
The History of Self-Care The “radical” concept of self-care was born during the civil rights era, a time when brave individuals were fighting the relentless enemies of prejudice and discrimination. These American heroes created the first real communities of care, standing strong together in the face of seemingly impossible challenges and unspeakable treatment. It can’t be lost on us that one of the concepts they were fighting for was (and remains) the basic human right to self-care. People...
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COVID-19 Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities (cdc.gov)
Why are some racial and ethnic minority groups disproportionately affected by COVID-19? Introduction Risk of Exposure to COVID-19 Risk of Severe Illness or Death from COVID-19 Disparities in COVID-19 Illness Disparities in COVID-19-Associated Hospitalizations Disparities in COVID-19 Deaths Unintended Consequences of COVID-19 Mitigation Strategies What We Can Do to Move Towards Health Equity Click each link above to learn about underlying health and social inequities that put many racial and...
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State Policies that Support Healthy Schools (childtrends.org)
California The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in partnership with ASCD, developed the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) framework to highlight the need for schools to address all aspects of children’s physical, mental, and social well-being to help them learn and thrive . In 2019, Child Trends, the Institute for Health Research and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and EMT Associates, Inc. released the first comprehensive analysis of state statutes...
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Why We Need to Pay More Attention to the Youngest Children and Their Parents (kqed.org)
Throughout the coronavirus outbreak, nearly everyone connected to children has raised the alarm about pandemic learning loss . Parents, educators, physicians and politicians — they might disagree on solutions, but they’re all concerned about how the current educational upheaval will affect K-12 students. By contrast, little attention has been paid to the pandemic’s effects on even younger learners. “There aren’t a lot of people out there screaming ‘what about the infants?’” said Jack...
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To Reduce Child Poverty, Increase Family Incomes (childtrends.org)
Children are more likely to live in poverty than any other age group in the United States. Poverty undermines children’s development and threatens their long-term prospects. In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, 12 million children lived in families with incomes below the federal poverty level; another 15 million lived in families that were one economic shock away from slipping into poverty. The COVID recession has since swelled the ranks of both groups. Money—especially in the form of a...
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SNAP Supports Health and Boosts the Economy (rwfj.org)
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government has provided billions of dollars in additional funding to prevent hunger and help ensure that children and families have access to healthy, affordable food. Part of the emergency funding is dedicated to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides short-term financial support to low-income individuals and families who struggle to afford food. This brief describes the purpose of SNAP and who it serves,...
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New KidsData.org Release: Positive Childhood Experiences During COVID-19 [positiveexperience.org/blog]
By Loren McCullough and Dr. Bob Sege, 3/11/21, positiveexperience.org/blog What’s going on with families during the COVID pandemic? In partnership with the American Academy of Pediatrics , Prevent Child Abuse America , and with assistance and financial support from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) , The Lucile Packard Foundation , the California Department of Public Health , and KidsData.org , we surveyed California parents, to find out how they are doing during the...
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Preserving Education amid COVID: The Vital Role of Community Partnerships (nonprofitquarterly.org)
Nearly one year ago, schools across the country abruptly shut their physical doors due to COVID-19. In spite of heroic efforts on the part of teachers and administrators, the pivot to online learning was uneven and chaotic at best. The Pew Research Center estimates that only half of students have successfully engaged in distance learning while at home, with students from lower income families, in particular, losing ground. One report predicts the pandemic will cause the average student to...
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More Comprehensive State Guidance Can Support the Whole Child during COVID-19 (ChildTrends.org)
As the COVID-19 pandemic persists, students continue to face significant challenges to their mental and physical health . In an April 2020 survey from Active Minds, 60 percent of high school students reported that their mental health has worsened during the pandemic. Pandemic-related school closures have also caused many students to lose access to necessary school-based health services . Students with disabilities and special health care needs, who may heavily rely on services typically...
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New Resource: Strategies for Trauma-Informed School Communities
The California Essentials for Childhood Initiative is excited to share a newly developed attached, “Strategies for Trauma-Informed School Communities: Practices to Improve Resiliency in School-Aged Children and Address Adverse Childhood Experiences”. This new resource is intended to assist state and local public health programs, child-serving systems, non-profits, and philanthropic organizations in their efforts to educate about the need for trauma-informed school policies and practices that...
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Why mental health is the key to dealing with learning loss [edsource.org]
By Carolyn Jones, EdSource, April 15, 2021 The best way schools can help students catch up academically after a year of distance learning is to ensure they feel relaxed, safe and connected to their friends and teachers as they return to the classroom. A year after the pandemic forced school districts to close campuses, students across California are beginning to return to the classroom at least a few days a week. But their experiences during the pandemic and their needs upon returning to...
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(At Least) 10 Things Educators Can Do to End the Prison Industrial Complex (edliberation.org)
Education for Liberation requires bold critique, creative acts, and, particularly for teachers, a willingness to take risks outside the status quo. Below we offer suggestions based on the ways many teachers and other youth advocates are building the capacity to challenge the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC). We know teachers are already practicing, generating and sharing other interventions. This is not a checklist of must-dos, nor is it an exhaustive list or intended to apply to every...
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Mental health, equity should be schools’ focus as students return, report says (edsource.org)
To help students readjust to life after the pandemic, schools should use their Covid-relief funding windfall to imbue mental health, equity and relationships into every aspect of the school day, according to a sweeping new report released Thursday. The report, “ Reimagine and Rebuild: Restarting school with equity at the center ,” was co-published by Policy Analysis for California Education and an array of other groups, including the California PTA, the California Teachers Association,...
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Strategies for Building More Equitable Schools When Returning to the Classroom (childtrends.org)
Students have faced isolation, loss, and trauma during the pandemic, all of which have impacted their home and school lives. Resources and plans to address these challenges vary across school districts, and many are ill-equipped to do so . For instance, prior to the pandemic, research found that 60 percent of schools lacked mental health services , and that mental health services for children of color were less accessible and of lower quality than services available to non-Latino White...
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Children Exposed to Trauma to be "Handled with Care" by School Personnel (sdcoe.net)
When children encounter police because they were a witness to violence or a traumatic event, they can sometimes show up to school the next few days feeling upset, setting off a cycle of poor school performance or acting out, whether in school in person or virtually. Unless a teacher knows the student experienced recent trauma, the child could end up in trouble instead of receiving support. The District Attorney's Office, the San Diego County Office of Education, local law enforcement, and...
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America’s Students Need Us More Than Ever (thriveglobal.com)
As many of our nation’s young people returned to school campuses to reconnect with teachers, coaches, and classmates this fall we rejoiced in their voices and comradery from the bus stops, classrooms, and playgrounds. These sounds take on a greater meaning as we reflect on the significant learning and relational losses that the COVID-19 pandemic has imposed on students globally. With the recent declaration from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent...
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A Flexible School Schedule was a Lifeline for Hayley (learn4life.org)
It was a chance meeting that brought Hayley Rico to Learn4Life. She was 17 years old, taking care of herself and her little brother because their parents who suffered from addiction were unable to properly provide for them. She had been kicked out of school for not attending regularly and was turned away from other schools because she had no permanent address to provide. Hayley happened to be at a community services event, and that evening two staff members from Learn4Life were there to talk...
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Are Restaurant Wait Times Getting Longer? Learn4Life’s Culinary CTE students are helping to solve the problem
Learn4Life high school students participate in a culinary skills career technical education course and Camryn (pictured below), shows off the baking creation she made during class. National Culinary Month highlights the importance of teaching foodservice and cooking skills to high schoolers who make up a big part of the restaurant industry workforce. LOS ANGELES (July 8, 2022) – Why does it take so long to get your order when you go out to eat? The number one problem is a decline in...