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Sixty-six years ago this summer, on my 16th birthday, I went to work for the daily newspaper in the small East Texas town of Marshall where I grew up. It was a good place to be a cub reporter—small enough to navigate but big enough to keep me busy and learning something every day. I soon had a stroke of luck. Some of the paper’s old hands were on vacation or out sick and I was assigned to help cover what came to be known across the country as “the housewives' rebellion.” Fifteen women in my...

Yesterday, 200 people, including our ACEs Connection policy analyst Elizabeth Prewitt, attended a day-long conference at the White House called “ Trauma Informed Approaches in Schools: Supporting Girls of Color and Rethinking Discipline”. What was the coolest thing? When Dr. Nadine Burke Harris asked how many people had heard of the ACE Study, MOST participants raised their hands! Leisa Irwin, community editor for our ACEs in Education group , took notes during the event (see the end of this...

With just four months remaining in the Obama presidency, the White House assembled leaders from 14 states and the District of Columbia and key administration officials for a day-long conference, “ Trauma Informed Approaches in Schools: Supporting Girls of Color and Rethinking Discipline.” Last summer’s White House meeting, titled “Rethink School Discipline,” covered issues related to the CDC-Kaiser Permanente ACE Study and trauma, but transforming schools through trauma-informed approaches...

Letter to the editor: USA TODAY’s editorial “ Every 72 minutes, a veteran commits suicide ” is a terrible fact. The piece spotlighted the difficulty of getting a handle on this particular issue. One young veteran lay down on a railroad track and ended his life. Another veteran in the same editorial shot himself to death. These veterans share their service in the armed forces, they have that common ground, but what else? The figure of 22 suicides a day includes all veterans from all wars.

exas -- More than a quarter of individuals arrested for misdemeanors last year in Fort Worth had mental health issues, but a new program in Tarrant County is trying to change that. The program, called the Enhanced Mental Health Docket, identifies repeat misdemeanor offenders who are diagnosed with mental illness and directs them to treatment instead of jailtime. "Let's get help from the beginning and eliminate the revolving door," said Judge Rainey Webb, who oversees the program in...

[Photo by Paradox 56 ] The Baltimore city school system will receive a $2.3 million federal grant to help students recover from trauma following the unrest that erupted in West Baltimore in April 2015, officials announced Thursday. The U.S. Department of Education announced that Baltimore was one of three districts — along with St. Louis and Chicago — to receive a federal Promoting Student Resilience grant this year. [For more of this story, written by Erica L Green, go to ...

Starting school at kindergarten. One teacher for an age-graded classroom. Teacher-led learning: “Repeat after me.” For nearly 100 years, these have been the traditions, routines, and expectations of American primary schools. Over that time, much has changed in children’s lives — there is now greater demographic diversity, to say nothing of the relentlessly changing technology, globalization, and growing recognition that education requires much more than rote learning — yet little has changed...

Shanice Givens’s son, Cyrus, was 6 years old when administrators at his charter school, Success Academy in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, put him on a list of students they wanted to push out. “They’d suspend him for not having on shoes, for not having his shirt tucked, for going to the bathroom,” says Givens. “So he lost courage and a will to want to do better.” According to Givens, Cyrus was suspended 30 times that school year. Success Academy spokesperson Ann Powell says the kindergartner was...

Almost 10 million U.S. adults seriously thought about committing suicide last year, federal health officials reported Thursday. Rates of suicide are at historically high levels, having jumped 27 percent since 2000, according to a report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Nearly three million adults made a plan to take their own life. And 1.4 million adults attempted suicide but weren't successful, according to the report. Overall, the percentage of...

Preteens who are overweight are often bullied or excluded from social activities, increasing their likelihood of anxiety and emotional problems, researchers say. Efforts to prevent or ease emotional distress among overweight students must address these negative and discriminatory behaviors, according to the authors of a new study. "The widespread misconception is that anyone who is heavy is likely to feel distressed because of their weight, yet our findings suggest that demeaning peer...

Recruitment for the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development ( ABCD ) study, the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the United States, began today. The landmark study by the National Institutes of Health will follow the biological and behavioral development of more than 10,000 children beginning at ages 9-10 through adolescence into early adulthood. Recruitment will be done over a two-year period through partnerships with public and private schools near research...

This story is part of our NPR Ed series on mental health in schools. In the waning days of summer vacation, Sydney and Laney are enjoying their final moments of freedom flipping over a high bar at a playground close by their house in Spartanburg, S.C. "You've got to pull your hips into the bar," says their mom, Selena, motioning to the girls, "you've got to kick up like that!" "I tried to kick!" Laney says indignantly. "I did this — you told me not to stick out!" Both girls have been...