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School-based mental health programs can reach large numbers of children, with increasing evidence of effectiveness in improving mental health and related outcomes, according to a research review in the September/October issue of the Harvard Review of Psychiatry . The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer . “ This review provides evidence that large-scale, school-based programs can be implemented in a variety of diverse cultures and educational models as well as preliminary evidence that...

Check out page 5 in “Spotlight on Sonoma County Schools” in the Aug. 5th PD. It’s the article “Healthy Minds: The Foundation For Learning”. So wonderful to see community effort around promoting youth social-emotional learning and trauma-informed care! Check out the full article here Thank you Kate Jenkins for sharing this article with us.

After the city of Fishers, an Indianapolis suburb of about 90,000, had 13 suicides in 2016, city officials launched a campaign to destigmatize mental health issues - including in the school system. District Mental Health Coordinator Brooke Lawson and Assistant Superintendent of Staff and Student Services Michael Beresford discuss the challenges of addressing mental health issues, and how a student-launched club is helping to remove the stigma attached to mental illness. Tell us about Stigma...

Together with the staff, they decided that handing out awards neither aligned with their beliefs nor brought out the best in their students—even for the sliver of kids who received awards. “Winners” got the message that product rather than process is what matters in education, Wejr said. “Learning should be the reward,” he added. And the far more plentiful “losers” heard that they weren’t good enough to be spotlighted on stage, or that their unique combination of attributes didn’t truly...

Greetings, ACN Community! I wanted to share this fantastic new resource guide developed by one of the work groups from the Georgia Statewide Human Trafficking Task Force. This guide provides background on best practice, principles of prevention, identifying resources for the classroom, developing a prevention plan, age appropriate teaching suggestions, analysis of specific programs, and guidelines for implementation and evaluation. It is really quite thorough and is full of excellent ideas...

While mental health is a priority for many high school students , they don't always see their schools as supportive places where they can seek help and talk through problems, a survey released Thursday finds. And that matters because teens often turn to informal support from peers to get through personal difficulties and stress, the report's authors said. Fifty-four percent of high school students responding to the online survey said mental health was a very important priority, and 34...

A group of teenagers who have seen their share of hard times is spending part of summer vacation trying to make a difference in their community. The youths are in a mentoring program and have decided to take on two very adult tasks: finding solutions to the sex trade in Redding and how to help their homeless peers. A dozen high school students were steered to a pilot project hosted by the Catalyst Center on Industrial Street and directed by an alternative education nonprofit named Zedbridge.

Wiry, active, savvy. Jasmine. There were not many good days. . . only random moments of calm in a violent storm, erupting on a ‘hair trigger’ When you look inside a classroom there are some things you can not see….

To improve education, California is asking schools to improve the way they meet the emotional as well as the academic needs of students. Among the strategies is what’s known as social and emotional learning , which refers to an organized method of teaching students behavioral expectations, self-management and relationship skills. This FAQ explains what social and emotional learning is, why schools say it matters and which school districts are paying the most attention to the concept. What is...

This is a fabulous new movie about rural education in Bertie NC and the lives of three young men, regularly experiencing toxic stress and trauma. The lives of the people in Bertie -- the prisons, the teen pregnancies, the poor schools, the lack of support both economic and psycho-social is stunning in its presentation of reality. Movie makes you want to cry but it also serves to energize. As this review notes, take action; see the movie as a true call to action. Time is a wasting'.

While mental health is a priority for many high school students , they don't always see their schools as supportive places where they can seek help and talk through problems, a survey released Thursday finds. And that matters because teens often turn to informal support from peers to get through personal difficulties and stress, the report's authors said. Fifty-four percent of high school students responding to the online survey said mental health was a very important priority, and 34...

Brighton Park is a predominantly Latino community on the southwest side of Chicago. It's a neighborhood threatened by poverty, gang violence , ICE raids , and isolation in a city where income, race, and zip code can determine access to jobs, schools, healthy food, and essential services. It is against this backdrop that the Chicago teacher Xian Franzinger Barrett arrived at the neighborhood's elementary school in 2014. Recognizing the vast economic and racial inequalities his students faced,...