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Navigating love and relationships can be difficult at any age, but especially so in the angsty teenage years. Budding romances can be fun and exhilarating but also confusing and uncomfortable. In these moments of confusion, teens often turn to friends or the internet for advice. But what if teens were trained with other options? What if lessons in love and romance were taught more explicitly in schools and at home? It turns out that teens are yearning for these lessons. They’re looking for...

Robert W. Coleman Elementary School in Baltimore, United States, doesn’t have a detention room or an active punishment policy for disruptive kids. Instead, there is a Mindful Moment room, where students are encouraged to participate breathing practices or meditation to “ calm down and re-center .” They are also given the opportunity to talk through what happened with specially trained aides. Created in partnership with the Holistic Life Foundation , a local nonprofit organization that...

In rural Kentucky, students go to school with people they’ve grown up with. It’s not uncommon for their teachers and principals to be family friends or even relatives. This can create a tight-knit school community, but it can also make privacy hard to come by. Vivian Carter, a longtime teacher and principal and the current innovation coordinator at Hazard Independent Schools, in Eastern Kentucky, said students don’t always open up to the adults in the school building if they have issues at...

Children who have lived through traumatic experiences and therefore display “difficult” behaviour need far better support, a charity has stated. YoungMinds is calling for a Government strategy to help these children who are “too often misunderstood by the services that should support them”. The charity’s new report, ‘ Addressing Adversity ’, argues that these kids don’t get the help they need because of this misunderstanding, yet they are the ones who often need it most. [For more on this...

Sometimes I think I have PTSD from failed change efforts. I am not kidding. I have developed symptoms from living through nearly twenty years of failed education reform efforts. When I reflect on the many change efforts I participated in, I shudder. I try to block it out. I avoid discussing it. There is an "activating" body memory (SE™ talk) for me that is associated with prescriptive change efforts. When I encounter a stimulus or trigger, like someone talking about a new protocol intended...

Of the roughly 74 million children in the United States, just under 51 million are preK–12 public school students. Every day, 13 million of these children go hungry. A report of child abuse is made every ten seconds . And 2.7 million have a parent in prison. Our children are living in a state of emergency. How can we, as educators, expect them to learn when they are living in a constant state of fight or flight? Even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente...

When it comes to the history of slavery in the U.S., the central role it played in shaping the country and its continued impact on race relations, students don't know much. In fact, only 8 percent of high school seniors can identify slavery as the central cause of the Civil War, according to a report released Thursday by the Southern Poverty Law Center . "It's important that everyone understand that slavery is truly at the foundation and formation of this nation," Hasan Kwame Jeffries,...

Our series "A More Perfect Union" aims to show that what unites us as Americans is far greater than what divides us. In this installment we introduce you to a young woman taking on bullying – one cafeteria at a time. "I was ostracized by everyone. I ate lunch alone every day. I was pushed into lockers. I was sent threatening emails," said high school senior Natalie Hampton of California. "I was physically attacked three times in two weeks and I came home sobbing with bleeding red scratch...

Twice a month, 8th grade English teacher Stephany Copeland hosts what she calls a “gender assembly” for the 55 girls she teaches at the KIPP Rise Academy in Newark, N.J. They’re usually oriented around things that the girls want to talk about, and given their age, that often means the power dynamics between boys and girls. Copeland’s work predates the #MeToo movement, but her focus on relationships and consent, many advocates say, is uncommon: Both topics are frequently missing from whatever...

Ten-year-old Ja’Vonie Morris sat in her school principal’s office on a recent day — not for the misbehavior that got her in so much trouble back in 3rd grade, but to show off her accomplishments under a schoolwide strategy that used positive reinforcement to help her turn things around. Before Mission Elementary, a school in Antioch about 35 miles northeast of Oakland, put the rigorous system in place, Ja’Vonie explained, “I would yell. I would kick stuff. I would walk out of the classroom...

Marlborough – One in five students today may struggle with mental illness as reported in the December 2017/January 2018 issue of Educational Leadership. Furthermore, The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMOI) estimates that 20 percent of youths aged 13-18 live with a mental health condition. On average, there are 121 suicides every day in the United States, of all ages as reported by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. According to NAMOI, 50 percent of all mental illness...

From the Idaho Education News - Trauma-informed teaching changes culture in Caldwell By Andrew Reed 01/31/2018 CALDWELL — Abuse. Bullying. Divorce. Neglect. Some students bring these experiences to school from home, which they can’t get out of their brain and truly focus on their learning. Angela Layne is no stranger to working with students who have experienced trauma. The Lewis and Clark Elementary counselor is changing the way students’ express feelings at school. She introduced...