Blog

By Carolyn Jones, EdSource, August 6, 2020 When Amistad continuation high school closed its campus in March due to the pandemic, the staff went into overdrive to stay in touch with students. They called all 205. If a student’s phone was disconnected, they went to the student’s house. If no one answered, they asked neighbors. “The effort was relentless,” said David Gustafson, principal of the public school in Indio, near Palm Springs, that serves students who’ve been expelled or are at risk...

Keeping students and staff safe from harm in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic is the number one goal of all schools and districts as they plan for the 2020-21 school year. The next most important goal is to return as many staff and students to the school building as possible. The CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics have developed detailed guidelines so schools can make that happen. If for some reason schools are not able to meet these standards, they are choosing to move instruction to...

Playworks believes in a trauma-sensitive approach Educators should focus on providing a trauma-sensitive approach to the reopening of school. Students are all having different experiences right now. For some students, the shutdown of schools due to COVID has provided them with a welcome reprieve from toxic situations or stressors. For others, it has created an increased chance that they’re experiencing Adverse Childhood Experiences or new stressors. “A trauma-sensitive school is one in which...

Join us this week 8/6 as we continue our discussions around school safety, school return, and imagining a better future for education. Weekly themes include: How do we create physical and psychological safety, especially in the face of so much uncertainty? What strategies can we use to create a culture of collective care? How do we implement peer support structures for youth AND adults? What might the first two weeks of school look like with an emphasis on student and adult well-being? How...

By Brita Belli, Yale News, July 27, 2020 When college students learn specific techniques for managing stress and anxiety, their well-being improves across a range of measures and leads to better mental health, a new Yale study finds. The research team evaluated three classroom-based wellness training programs that incorporate breathing and emotional intelligence strategies, finding that two led to improvements in aspects of well-being. The most effective program led to improvements in six...

By Clare Lombardo Aug 1 In any ordinary school year, school nurses are busy. This year, that's an understatement. "Our role has expanded tenfold," says Eileen Gavin, who co-leads a team of nurses for Middletown Township Public Schools in New Jersey. She and school nurses across the country face an unenviable and unprecedented task: caring for students and staff during a global pandemic. "We were at the front line of COVID-19 before the stay at home orders were put into place," says Gloria...

By Catherine Gewertz, Education Week, July 21, 2020 Teachers across the country are preparing for a school year brimming with unprecedented challenges brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. A likely byproduct? Teachers’ stress levels could soar, making an already-tough job tougher. By now, it’s a truism that teaching is stressful. Researchers have increasingly documented that stress, in surveys and in the trails of burned-out teachers leaving the profession. In the last decade, many...

Please join ACEs Connection member and school nurse, writer, and public speaker, Robin Cogan, MEd, RN, NCSN for a discussion about the pandemic as it relates to family planning around back-to-school (or not) plans. The conversation with be hosted by Parenting with ACEs Community Manager, @Cissy White (ACEs Connection Staff) and facilitated by @Alison Cebulla (ACEs Connection Staff) , the Northeast Region Community Facilitator. Many of us are still not sure if our schools will open this fall...

Apologies friends, we can't meet today 7/30! Tune in next week, same bat time-same bat channel. Weekly themes include: How do we create physical and psychological safety, especially in the face of so much uncertainty? What strategies can we use to create a culture of collective care? How do we implement peer support structures for youth AND adults? What might the first two weeks of school look like with an emphasis on student and adult well-being? How do we manage the transition while...

By Mdlogix, July 2020 Solano County Office of Education (SCOE) works hard to maximize behavioral health support to students in the county’s six independent school districts. Through a partnership with the county’s behavioral health department – which has been continuously expanded and strengthened over the past 11 years – SCOE has been able to support a variety of suicide prevention, mental health, and social emotional learning programs in school-based settings. Part of these initiatives...

By Kenne A. Dibner, Heidi A. Schweingruber, Dimitri A. Christakis, JAMA Network, July 29, 2020 The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has presented unprecedented challenges to the nation’s kindergarten-grade 12 education system. 1 The rush to respond to the pandemic led to closures of school buildings across the country, with little time to ensure continuity of instruction or to create a framework for deciding when and how to reopen schools. States and school districts are now...

By Trent Stamp, Ed Source, July 29, 2020 With just weeks before the fall semester begins, school districts are grappling with reopening decisions as Covid-19 cases rise across the country. It’s obviously a tough choice. We know that little can replace the hours of in-person instruction children should receive each day, and researchers and educators are so worried about these growing deficits that the term “covid slide” has supplanted the “summer slide.” But intergenerational programs can...