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Linsey McMurrin, an SEL and Prevention Specialist with Peacemaker Resources, is an enrolled member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. She is program manager of Girls Lead on the Go!, a leadership program for young women, and is an organizer of the Bemidji Area Truth and Reconciliation Initiative, a grassroots effort to promote truth-seeking, healing and change through increasing understanding and building relationships among area indigenous and non-indigenous communities. Linsey is certified...

This is a follow up to my previous email concerning the PP v Compton class action lawsuit concerning adverse events and eligibility under the Americans with Disability act. I did a presentation at the Legal Issues in Special Education conference on April 24th. The participants consisted of special education directors, compliance officers and parent advocates The big surprise was that there was huge interest in this issue. It was standing room only in the room. Secondly even though this...

I have been involved in all four ACEs Symposium's that LaSalle School has organized (including as a speaker last year, yikes!), and there have been moments each year where I have thought "Look at all these people, this is so cool!" That feeling was multiplied tenfold when I looked at the audience of approximately 800 people who were participating in Allison Sampson-Jackson's bilateral movement exercise last Saturday. It is really heartening to feel like you are part of a movement toward...

“Friggin jerk!” Cecily screamed. Even though her two young sons were in the car, she raged on, “What are you, a moron?! Where did you learn to drive?! I hope you rot!!” Cecily wanted help controlling her reactions. She knew instinctively her temper was damaging to her children and contributed to her high blood pressure. When Cecily described her road rage to me, she described herself as being angry with the man in the Blue Volvo. “Of course you were,” I validated, “After all, the driver...

Leaders of Buncombe County’s ACE Collaborative learned quickly that bringing agency professionals and community members together in the name of resilience-building was harder than it sounded. Sometimes the leaders’ invitations to trainings or guest speakers drew just a trickle of response. Other times, the room crackled with tension —on one side, representatives of Buncombe County Health and Human Services (the backbone and fiscal agent for the Mobilizing Action for Resilient Communities...

Advancing Parenting, advancingparenting.org, is a grassroots, Bakersfield, CA based nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring the quality of parenting in communities. Toward that end, we place concise and unambiguous parenting tips in public spaces, including but not limited to windows of stores, offices, restaurants, automobiles, and billboards. This, in an effort to elevate the quality of parenting, prevent adverse childhood experiences (ACES), and improve educational outcomes for...

I have written this post on why the term PTSD is misguided given our present understandings of trauma and recovery. True, the term has old origins, dating back to the military and war injuries that appeared months after an actual blast. But, times have changed; so has our knowledge and experience. This linked piece forces us to re-think PTSD and consider alternatives. Thoughts are welcome. To simply and to lead readers into this piece, ponder the Japanese pottery (and its philosophy called...

The Netflix series, 13 Reasons Why, has caused a furor. In the show, a high school student who has died by suicide has left 13 tapes, one for each person she believes have contributed in some way to her eventual decision. Each episode relates to an individual tape. The penultimate episode depicts the suicide in a gruesome manner. Some say the series is an accurate and sensitive portrayal of the inner angst of an individual that will help enlighten us as to the motivations behind suicidal...

Traumatic experiences happen-but when they happen to children, it can affect their view of the world, their sense of safety, their development, and even their longer-term physical and mental health. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), more than two-thirds of children reported at least one traumatic experience by age 16. While not every child will be traumatized from a difficult experience, some potentially traumatic events could include abuse,...

About 18 months ago, there seemed to be a growing national consensus about the imperative of criminal-justice reform. There was rare bipartisan agreement on the scale and scope of the challenges America’s incarceration crisis presents. While it seems that federal momentum for reform has slowed—if not reversed, as of late—it’s still possible to take meaningful steps toward justice locally. [For more of this story, written by Darren Walker, go to ...

On a cloudy day in February, Will Cox pointed to a pair of news photos that prompted a room of University of Wisconsin, Madison, graduate students to shift in their seats. In one image, a young African American man clutches a carton of soda under his arm. Dark water swirls around his torso; his yellow shirt is soaked. In the other, a white couple is in water up to their elbows. The woman is tattooed and frowning, gripping a bag of bread. Cox read aloud the captions that were published...

This is 19-year-old Emily Palmer from Wiltshire, southwest England, who is currently doing an apprenticeship in business administration. She's the author of a book on mental health for small children called Scrambled Heads. "I decided to write the book after my own experiences with mental health," Palmer told BuzzFeed News. "Having battled with anxiety and anorexia nervosa, I wanted to use my own experiences to encourage conversations on such an important topic." [For more of this story,...