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Several South Florida high school educators are alarmed that a new state civics initiative designed to prepare students to be “virtuous citizens” is infused with a Christian and conservative ideology after a three-day training session in Broward County last week. Teachers who spoke to the Times/Herald said they don’t object to the state’s new standards for civics, but they do take issue with how the state wants them to be taught. “It was very skewed,” said Barbara Segal, a 12th-grade...

By Mark Keierleber, Photo: Erik Ewers, The 74, June 25, 2022 When brothers Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers set out to film a documentary about the mental health struggles of American youth, they knew they were tackling a pervasive problem unspoken about for far too long. What they didn’t realize were the lessons they’d come to uncover about themselves. Hiding in Plain Sight: Youth Mental Illness , a two-part documentary that premieres Monday on PBS, presents the raw accounts of nearly...

Can we talk about childhood trauma for a sec? More specifically… How it's impacting your students' learning and behavior in the classroom? The reason I bring this up is that before the global pandemic, childhood trauma was already at epidemic-level proportions. That was before Covid... (Yeah, I know.) Since the pandemic, we can estimate that those numbers have skyrocketed. What does this mean for teachers? Well, on one hand you've got more children walking into your classroom under the...

By Katy Knight, Illustration: Siegel Family Endowment, The 74, June 27, 2022 The past two years have demonstrated that schools are much more than places of education. While pandemic-related closures interrupted learning, reduced academic expectations and widened inequality gaps for students, they also carried high consequences for communities at large. When schools shut down, working parents — especially women — who were left without child care suffered career setbacks as they struggled to...

Can we talk about childhood trauma for a sec? More specifically… How it's impacting your students' learning and behavior in the classroom? The reason I bring this up is that before the global pandemic, childhood trauma was already at epidemic-level proportions. That was before Covid... (Yeah, I know.) Since the pandemic, we can estimate that those numbers have skyrocketed. What does this mean for teachers? Well, on one hand you've got more children walking into your classroom under the...

By Linda Jacobson, Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images, The 74, June 23, 2022 This summer marks the third time in eight years that the U.S. Department of Education is overhauling its policy on how school districts should handle student discipline. And while the controversy surrounding the issue hasn’t changed, the pandemic offers up a troubling new context: Districts are reporting spikes in student misconduct , violent attacks on school employees and blatant disregard for school rules.

By Javiera Salman, Photo: Terrell Clark/The Hechinger Report, The Hechinger Report, June 9, 2022 C ierra Kaler-Jones wasn’t your traditional dance teacher. When Kaler-Jones taught dance, her students didn’t come just for the dance lessons. Her classes involved lessons on Black history and women’s history, as well as wide-ranging conversations about was happening in the world. Many of Kaler-Jones’ students — most of them Black — weren’t taught about important Black figures or positive history...

By Hannah Natanson and Moriah Balingit, Photo: Cedar Attanasio/AP, The Washington Post, June 16, 2022 A Florida teacher lost her job for hanging a Black Lives Matter flag over her classroom door and rewarding student activism. A Massachusetts teacher was fired for posting a video denouncing critical race theory. A teacher in Missouri got the ax for assigning a worksheet about privilege — and still another, in California, was fired for criticizing mask mandates on her Facebook page. They were...

By Carolyn Jones, Photo: Screenshot from article, EdSource, June 16, 2022 Five years ago, Fremont High in East Oakland had some of the highest discipline rates and lowest attendance in the city. Fights and conflicts were common occurrences. Only 1 in 4 graduates were qualified to attend public college in California. One in 3 dropped out entirely. But Fremont High is – literally – a different place now. With a newly rebuilt campus and an intensive focus on improving campus climate, Fremont...

By Peter Yeung, The 74, June 20, 2022 In 2004, Maxence Arcy moved with his family to Bellefontaine, a poor suburb of the French city of Toulouse. Limited by what he could afford, the father of six bought a place on a sprawling housing estate in the neighborhood which had catchment schools with the worst educational record in the region. “At the time, there were only Mahgrebians and Africans living on the estate and going to these schools,” says Arcy, who originally migrated from Morocco in...

Announcing upcoming courses for educators! Join Trauma-informed Education or Supporting Marginalized Students this summer!

16 Strong Project is excited to be recruiting for our third Youth Advocacy Board! We are looking for youth ages 14-24 who are passionate about mental health education, want to learn more about ACEs, and who are ready to inspire change in their communities.