Blog

By Terry Brooks, Courier-Journal, October 7, 2021 Is that the best we’ve got for our kids? Knee-jerk and wrong-headed proposals. Courageous young people giving voice to the issues at hand in the middle of a school board meeting . Bold leadership from our superintendent. And a puzzling mix of regressive and promising policy proposals from Metro Council leadership. Thus is the landscape of Louisville as we grieve the tragic murder of Tyree Smith . And as we reflect upon the Louisville...

By Lizzie Tribone, Talk Poverty, October 5, 2021 When Jennifer Brown left Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee on a work-release program, it had been six-and-a-half months since she had seen her son, Elijah. The last time they’d been together was when she gave birth to him, under the watch of two prison guards, in a hospital near the prison. Brown had forty-eight hours with her newborn before she had to hand him over to a family chosen by Together for Good, a religious nonprofit that...

By Jesse Wegman, The New York Times, October 7, 2021 Twenty years ago, Judy Bolden served 18 months in a Florida prison. She has been free ever since, but she is still barred from voting by the state until she pays all court fines and fees associated with her conviction. When Ms. Bolden sat to be photographed by The Times earlier this year, she said she had received a letter informing her that her outstanding debt was a few hundred dollars. Then she checked the Volusia County website and...

The pandemic has had a lasting effect on youth mental health. Moved by a desire to reduce youth’s toxic stress and increase their resilience, The Dibble Institute, in partnership with a team of students and alumni from ArtCenter College of Design and author Carolyn Curtis, PhD, is releasing Me & My Emotions —a new, free adaptation of our beloved Mind Matters Curriculum. The mobile-friendly Me & My Emotions website features engaging graphics and bite-sized lessons teens can access and...

If you’re feeling extra anxiety these days, you are not alone. We’re all in a state of uncertainty as we’re facing the ongoing pandemic amidst multiple global crises. None of us are going through this unchanged. Living through times like these can be extremely disorienting and unsettling—and fuel anxiety, especially for those of us already susceptible to it. Anxiety feeds on uncertainty. When under chronic stress, we can get overwhelmed and regress easily, often without even realizing it.

By Emily Bramhall, Housing Matters, October 6, 2021 For students who are also parents, completing higher education in an in-demand field can lead to greater opportunity and financial stability . Though a growing number of young parents are enrolling in higher education programs, postsecondary institutions are often structured to serve recent high school graduates who do not have children depending on them. Parenting students juggle costs of tuition, housing, and child care while attending...

By Rhitu Chatterjee and Carmel Wroth, National Public Radio, October 7, 2021 Of all the sad statistics the U.S. has dealt with this past year and a half, here is a particularly difficult one: A new study estimates that more than 140,000 children in the U.S. have lost a parent or a grandparent caregiver to COVID-19. The majority of these children come from racial and ethnic minority groups. "This means that for every four COVID-19 deaths, one child was left behind without a mother, father...

On Indigenous People's Day, we celebrate the values, practices and policies of Tribal Nations, which treat land and water as an ancestral gift to be preserved and protected. As we cope with oil spills, wildfires, and historic droughts, that worldview can help guide us to a sustainable, equitable, and healthy future. Now more than ever, we need that wisdom to help us reclaim the health of the earth > More RWJF resources: Connecting Indigenous Knowledge and Practices webinar : Learn how...

PC Reacts is a new series by PACEs Connection in which we look at current events through a trauma-informed and PACEs science lens. In the next episode in this series, we will respectfully and mindfully discuss issues related to the recent national fascination with the missing person and murder case of Gabby Petito, who was found at Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming on September 19th. While this case has seen hundreds, maybe thousands of pieces of media coverage over the past weeks, it...

It’s clear that, in many cases, food is not the real problem, but rather a solution to temporarily relieve stress, feel comforted, and have a temporary escape from the bad memories, shame, and guilt that often come with trauma. Addressing the root cause of weight gain isn’t as black-and-white as simply changing the way one eats or exercises. Learn what it takes and how you can get the support you need along the way.

By Evelyn Johnson, Alan Pesky, and Claudia Aulum, Stanford Social Innovation Review, October 6, 2021 As our education systems move from scrambling to adapt to school closures and distance learning towards something approaching normality, many are asking questions about how to recover what was lost. How have children been impacted by this unprecedented gap in their learning? Will there be long-term effects? Will they suffer socially and emotionally from the “ COVID slide ”? And what can be...

By Lily Bohkle, Dig Boston, October 6, 2021 With the new school year in full swing, a new report from the Sentencing Project outlines key steps Massachusetts and other states could take to end what they call the school-to-prison pipeline. A number of districts in the Commonwealth employ police officers in schools, known as school resource officers. Leon Smith, executive director of Citizens for Juvenile Justice, said there is little evidence the presence of a police officer improves school...