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Matt Hannon was in preschool when he started getting into trouble. Teachers quickly labeled his mischievous behavior — like cutting his hair under the table — problematic. His kindergarten teacher warned that if Matt didn’t stop using “potty words,” she would make him do his work in the bathroom. His first-grade teacher forced Matt to copy the phrase “I will not blurt out in circle” 100 times. Matt began to dread school and developed serious separation anxiety. His acting-out got worse. “I...

Hello! I’m a Community Manager for the Practicing Resilience for Self-Care & Healing community. This is an introduction to me and this new community. I graduated with a B.S. in Public Health from Santa Clara University June 2017. And I’m interested in preventing chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, at the community and population level by addressing biological, psychological, and social factors that affect chronic disease outcomes. As the...

The children of immigrants make up less than one-fourth of the nation’s youth population yet account for 30 percent of children living in poverty, a new report finds. More than that, young black and brown Americans were worse off compared to white and Asian-American children, the Annie E. Casey Foundation said. The foundation analyzed youth welfare along several axes, including education, health and economic indicators, to come up with an index of how well young people in various racial and...

Teachers across the country are being priced out of local housing markets by low pay, according to a new analysis of 124 of America’s largest districts by the National Council on Teacher Quality. Three key findings: In 80 percent of the districts analyzed, a teacher with a master’s degree and five years of experience cannot comfortably afford a mortgage. More than a quarter of new teachers cannot afford to rent one-bedroom apartments where they work. Teachers must save for an average of 10...

We have the story now of a radical new school in Washington, D.C., Ron Brown College Preparatory High School. It's an all-boys public school designed for young men of color with a staff of mostly black men. And that staff is passionately opposed to suspending students. In the early days at Ron Brown, Dawaine Cosey spends a lot of time just trying to get students to follow the dress code. COSEY: I tell the guys here all the time, like, you're going to get love, and there's really nothing you...

Your child doesn't want to go to school. It's a daily struggle that many parents are familiar with. But what if your child refuses to go to school? Mental health professionals and educators say what used to be considered run-of-the-mill truancy could actually be something else. Some cases of chronic absenteeism are now being called "school refusal," which is triggered by anxiety, depression, family crises and other traumatic events. It can lead to weeks or even months of missed school days.

Live Oak Charter School in Petaluma hosted the Schoolbox Project to help train and support parents and educators in responding to the crisis in our community. Key messages include: Our local wildfires happened in the context of many other recent world events that were already troubling our residents. Our disaster was not just a short event that ended after a few hours or a day, this is a longer term crisis that is taking a toll on our ability to cope. Our recovery is likely to take weeks,...

When the clouds darken and rain starts pouring down, many Houston-area elementary school students get nervous and start to sob — a sign of the long-lasting effects of watching the water levels rise during and after Hurricane Harvey. For Donna Wotkyns, a licensed social worker in Houston, that reaction shows exactly why ramping up resources for long-term mental health services for Texas students is necessary. “I’m a big believer in … support groups, getting together multiple children or youth...

When Emerie Lukas was hired to develop and teach a STEM Foundations course to middle school students at the Dayton Regional STEM School , she was starting from scratch. The stated goal of the course was to prepare students for more rigorous work in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) classes in high school, but Lukas knew that meant far more than academic preparation. She needed to teach her students how to give and take effective feedback, how to solve conflicts, how to...

After stepping down from her position as principal at Science Hill High School in May, Melanie Riden-Bacon set out to transform what was once known as the Alternative Center into what is now Topper Academy. Riden-Bacon, now the Topper Academy director, said in July that it was time for a “culture shift.” Part of that shift involved instituting trauma care training and rewarding good behavior and academic achievement, rather than using the center as a “punitive” place for students struggling...

When considering implementing trauma-informed practices in your school, you might find yourself asking: How do I know which students have experienced trauma, so I can teach those students in a trauma-informed way? While it’s important to identify students in need of extra support, we can use trauma-informed practices with every single student because they benefit them all. Think of a wheelchair-accessible ramp to a building: Not every single person needs it, but it significantly removes...

The idea behind public education is simple: A community pays into a system that aims to create a bright future for the next generation. Years pass, and those kids grow up. They pay into the same system, yielding the same dividends. Repeat. But things aren’t always that simple. As this week’s episode explains, the policies that shape public education can be subject to influences – ideological and financial. We begin with a profile of President Donald Trump’s Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos.