Blog

The first time I heard a preschooler explaining a classmate’s disruptive behavior, I was surprised at how adult her 4-year-old voice sounded. Her classmate “doesn’t know how to sit still and listen,” she said to me, while I sat at the snack table with them. He couldn’t learn because he couldn’t follow directions, she explained, as if she had recently completed a behavioral assessment on him. Months before either of these children would start kindergarten,...

This is a free video training resource designed to give anyone who works with children important trauma-focused information about how student learning and behavior is impacted by trauma and how educators and support staff can help students develop a...

Advocacy organizations that provide policy, defend children and provide information about trauma-informed schools. If you recommend any others besides those listed here, please leave a comment in this blog post with a link and/or information.

All of these practices and frameworks are -- or should be -- informed by the new knowledge about the unified science of human development, aka ACEs writ large, or NEAR science. This encompasses the epidemiology of adverse childhood experiences (ACE studies), the neurobiology of toxic stress, the biomedical and epigenetic consequences of toxic stress, and resilience research.   Frameworks and Models Attachment, Self-Regulation and Competency (ARC) Source: The Trauma Center at the...

Reports and research about how ACEs affect schoolchildren, or about how schools become trauma-informed, or the outcomes of integrating trauma-informed and resilience-building practices in schools. If you recommend any others besides those listed here, please leave a comment with a link and/or information.

  School suspension rates have fallen in California for students of every ethnicity in the last three years, a sign that a shift in discipline practices in many school districts is starting to have an effect, according to  a study...

In October a video showing a senior deputy yank a student from her seat and flip her desk at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina went viral on the Internet. This incident gained wide national attention and demonstrates the need for...

  About 120 educators from in and around Sacramento County met on Saturday, Oct. 17, for day two of Beyond Trauma: Building a Resilient Sacramento , which was held at the gorgeous campus of Meristem in Fair Oaks. The workshop was co-sponsored by...

Jane Stevens contacted me about posting our presentation delivered at the correctional educators conference this last spring. We have been delivering online professional development to all of the educators in the Ohio Juvenile Justice setting in order...

Part I: The Implications of Trauma & Student Misbehavior In this three part series we will explore the issues of complex trauma, the effect on emotional and cognitive development of young people, and interventions at the classroom and system level that can mitigate negative outcomes. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...olsan_b_8234038.html

                    Photo credit Max Klingensmith at  flickr . Jose was one of the calmest, quietest, most peaceful boys in the classroom.  The kind of boy everybody loves.    ...

It’s a familiar list for school counselors in the Findlay City School district: physical abuse, divorce, death in the family. The list goes on.   But for school employees who might not be as familiar with such a list of traumatic events...