ACEs and Education

Good Monday morning everyone. It is a public holiday here in Trinidad and Tobago for the Arrival Day observance on Sunday but this article just cannot wait. Kudos to our ACEs Caribbean Community member, Mark Nicoll, whose article on ACEs and their impact on children's education was published last week in the Cayman Islands newspaper, Cayman Current. At the time, Mark was commenting on the Education Data Report 2020 that highlighted the poor performance of public schools as compared with...

Kudos to Gerry Diamond who shared this image on Twitter. His handle is @gerrydiamond71 As Gerry put it, this challenge of regulation also is seen in young people who have unaddressed ACEs and Trauma. They often present with arrested emotional development. Parents and caregivers, including teachers, may need to remember that the young minds in their care are not yet equipped to make the mature choices or decisions the adults hope they will make. Being mindful of the fact that emotional...

Good Tuesday morning everyone. As we navigate the various systems of our nation, one in which trauma often manifests is the penal and criminal justice system. In our nation, thousands of men and boys and hundreds of women and girls are warehoused in some form of youth detention, pre-trial detention or incarceration after having been failed by dysfunctional or abusive families, and ineffective educational institutions. Often bursting at the seams due to overcrowding, these places of detention...

In observance of Mental Health Awareness Month and World Day of the Boy Child (WDBC) on May 16, 2021, ACEs Caribbean Community will be hosting its first "Live" online chat on the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences in the Caribbean. In a virtual discussion titled " ACEs & The Boy Child ", we will speak with the founder of World Day of the Boy Child, Dr. Jerome Teelucksingh, and explore Mental Health and the effect of Adverse Childhood Experiences on boys with consulting psychologist,...

Good morning everyone and welcome to another Friday. We are offering you an opportunity to think deeply about addressing trauma in education as we move into the weekend. In an article on Trauma-Informed Schools, Paul Gorski shares about his experience at a particular school and asks us to explore how we are seeking to implement Trauma-Informed practice in our school systems. "A major challenge at this school, as in many schools, was the leadership team's habit of embracing shiny new program...

Good Monday morning, dear friends. We hope you are healthy and had a pleasant Mother's Day yesterday. Well, the day we told you about last week is finally here. It's the free symposium from the Picower Institute at MIT on Early Life Stress and Mental Health. Speakers will include Dr. Nadine Burke-Harris, Mr. Bryan Stevenson and a mix of 'neuroscientists, policy experts, physicians, educators and activists'. They will discuss 'how our experiences and biology work together to affect how our...

Good morning, everyone. 😀 On Monday 10th May, there will be a full-day symposium (9am to 3pm) on "Early Life Stress and Mental Health" by the Picower Institute at MIT. Speakers include Dr. Nadine Burke-Harris, California's Surgeon General and a renowned advocate for ACEs science, and the amazing, Bryan Stevenson, founder of Equal Justice Initiative (pictured above). Here's an extract from the promo: "In what ways are health and other outcomes affected by early life difficulty? What can...

Around the world, the 1 year anniversary of Covid-19 interrupting our lives was observed in different ways. For many, the concern is for the children and young people who are experiencing Covid-19 as an adverse childhood experience. The clinical observations of a Canadian psychotherapist may well be true for the Caribbean region as it relates to how children are coping one year on. Alyssa Strachan, based at the Delton Glebe Counselling Centre in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada has been helping...

Hello Community. It's Friday again! To kick off the weekend, we want to examine some research from the USA conducted by the Secret Service that has found a link to Adverse Childhood Experiences in youth who plotted or executed mass murders or shootings at school. According to the study, most of the perpetrators were "motivated by grievances against them, usually peers and bullying. Many were suicidal or had depression." Eight had a desire for fame or notoriety. "More than half had been...

Hello everyone! Welcome to "Wondering Wednesday" where we share insights and experiments from across the globe and inquire how they might work in the Caribbean. For many of our territories, there have been waves of the Coronavirus and those have led to periodic imposition and relaxation of various public health restrictions. At present, Trinidad and Tobago is under a 3-week period of restrictions where beaches and rivers are off-limits following the Easter holiday weekend and a spike in...

The state of Tennessee in the USA has a comprehensive programme to build strong brains by reducing ACEs and combating toxic stress in children and youth. A really positive tone of the programme is that it emphasises Hope by reinforcing that while ACEs science is a FACT it is not FATE. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) website has a series of 6 short videos outlining the various components. The last 2 videos show how to get buy-in for your initiative from law enforcement agencies, state...

"For generations, we have trained practitioners to consider childhood suffering only through the institutional lens of child protection. Through research on the prevalence of ACEs in our most vulnerable children, it has become clear this approach is not enough." This is the introduction to an online event, "Changing Our Response to Childhood Adversity", to be hosted by The Learning Institute (https://www.learninginstitute.co.uk/) of the UK on 30th June 2021 where they will unveil their...