Blog

Just how stressed are teachers? A recent Gallup poll found teachers are tied with nurses for the most stressful occupation in America today. Unfortunately, that stress can have a trickle-down effect on their students, leading to disruptive behavior that results in student suspensions. One of those overburdened teachers is Jennifer Lloyd, a high school English teacher in Maryland and a graduate student at the University of Missouri. She has noticed how perceptive her students are to her mood...

It was Pete Walker, an M.A. in psychoanalysis, who first coined the phrase emotional flashback to describe the gut-wrenching experience of reliving the helplessness and dissociation caused by trauma. In his book, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving , Walker describes many aspects of emotional flashbacks and how the inner critic holds people hostage. I shall be referencing this book throughout this work. In this piece, we shall examine how the inner critic and toxic shame create the...

By Steven Yoder, The Imprint, November 22, 2020 A dozen years ago , New York state revealed that taxpayers were shelling out $140,000 to $200,000 each year to house each young person in the state’s juvenile facilities. Many of these supervised residential centers and deeply troubled youth prisons lined with razor wire and high-security locked gates were less than half full. The state’s Office of Children and Family Services described in a 2008 report with a cover showing rows of empty beds,...

By Jim Morrison, The Washington Post, November 24, 2020 For 10,000 years, the Swinomish tribe has fished the waters of northwestern Washington, relying on the bounty of salmon and shellfish not only as a staple of its diet but as a centerpiece of its culture. At the beginning of the fishing season, the tribe gathers on the beach for a First Salmon ceremony, a feast honoring the return of the migratory fish that binds the generations of a tribe that calls itself the People of the Salmon. At...

1.0 Continuing Medical Education/Maintenance of Certification Credit Available* The ACEs Aware December webinar, “Supporting Patients in Pregnancy: ACEs and Maternal Health” is now available to watch at ACEsAware.org . Providers seeking CME/MOC credits* must complete a separate activity evaluation in order to request CME/CE certificate. Those seeking MOC credits must also successfully complete the post-test with a score of 75% and higher. Please follow CME/MOC instructions available on...

By Deke Farrow, The Modesto Bee, November 28, 2020 Preston Lee and Melissa Mullings, both juniors at Gregori High School, had similar experiences when the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to begin distance learning. Logging into school to study from home just wasn’t working for them. Easily distracted and lacking the structure of a traditional school day, they pretty much gave up on learning and saw their grades plummet, they said in phone interviews last week. Early on, Melissa realized...

By Nathan McCall, The New York Times, November 23, 2020 Decades ago, when I was a teenager growing up in Portsmouth, Va., my buddies and I constantly railed against the evils of “the system.” We viewed the system as a vast, amorphous establishment that worked to preserve White privilege and control Black folks’ lives. It was the 1970s, and as proof that our hatred of the White mainstream was justified, we had to look no further than our homes. We saw that our parents were beaten down,...

By Zoe Beery, The New York Times, November 27, 2020 Lately, Sam Jacobs has been having a lot of conversations with his family’s lawyers. He’s trying to gain access to more of his $30 million trust fund. At 25, he’s hit the age when many heirs can blow their money on harebrained businesses or a stable of sports cars. He doesn’t want to do that, but by wealth management standards, his plan is just as bad. He wants to give it all away. “I want to build a world where someone like me, a young...

By Megan Conn, The Imprint, November 25, 2020 As students across the country struggle to keep up with their schoolwork while sheltering from the coronavirus, tens of thousands of foster youth will now have access to one-on-one support from a free tutoring program being rolled out nationwide. A few months ago, leaders at the online tutoring platform Learn to Be reached out to offer their help to iFoster, which connects foster youth to resources. The two quickly set up a pilot program to match...

By Erika Christakis, The Atlantic, December 1, 2020 T he litany of tragedies and inconveniences visited upon Americans by COVID-19 is long, but one of the more pronounced sources of misery for parents has been pandemic schooling. The logistical gymnastics necessary to balance work and school when all the crucial resources—time, physical space, internet bandwidth, emotional reserves—are limited have pushed many to the point of despair. Pandemic school is clearly not working well, especially...

By Virgie Hoban, November 19, 2020, Berkeley News. It was a racist policy enacted over 80 years ago, but its aftermath dribbles on — all the way to the babies born today, new research shows. Using historical maps and modern birth data, UC Berkeley researchers have found that babies born in California neighborhoods historically redlined — denied federal investments based on the discriminatory lending practices of the 1930s — are now more likely to have poorer health outcomes. The study was...

Join us on December 8th for this discussion on Transforming Correctional Design for Justice Reform! Work in corrections or youth justice? Engaged in the social justice movement? Are you a designer or architect? This is one talk you can't afford to miss! Christine Cowart, of Cowart Trauma Informed Partnership will join Janet Roche, faculty member and Alumni Council member of Boston Architectural College (BAC), in alive-broadcast event, to discuss the implications of trauma-informed principles...