Blog

Educators and parents don’t all support the move. The school board’s decision was unanimous. Jun. 11, 2020, 9:32 p.m. Denver’s public school system will part ways with in-school police officers who have monitored students and campuses for 22 years. After four hours of heated comment from the public Thursday evening, the Denver Public Schools Board of Education voted unanimously to order Denver Police Department officers out of school hallways and classrooms. The resolution , sponsored by...

By Kalyn Belsha, Chalkbeat, June 9, 2020 Last week, as widespread protests continued over the police killing of George Floyd, the Minneapolis school board voted unanimously to end its contract with the local police department. Since then, school officials elsewhere have moved in a similar direction. A majority of Denver school board members say they’ll support a measure to remove police from the district’s schools by the end of the year. And the superintendent of Portland’s public schools...

By Theresa Harrington and Ali Tadayon, EdSource, June 10, 2020 Amid calls to defund municipal police in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police, two Oakland Unified school board members are pushing to eliminate the district’s police force. This is an acceleration of a demand that dates back nine years, when activists began calling on the district to dissolve its police department after a black student was shot and killed by a district police sergeant. The proposal by board...

It started as a series of Instagram posts; then it became a downloadable workbook. Now, the “Me and White Supremacy” challenge is reaching the mainstream—and creator Layla F. Saad hopes all teachers with white privilege will find the courage to take it. ADRIENNE VAN DER VALK ISSUE 62, SUMMER 2019 The night of June 26, 2018, Layla Saad was unable to sleep. The previous year had been a taxing one for the writer, life and business coach, and spiritual advisor. The deadly Unite the Right rally...

By Desmond Ang, EducationNext, June 4, 2020 How will the death of George Floyd affect Minneapolis schoolchildren? New research I conducted on the effects of police violence indicates that it will significantly hurt their educational and emotional well-being. Examining detailed data on more than 700,000 public high school students and over 600 officer-involved killings in a large urban county, I found that police use of force has large, negative spillovers on educational achievement and...

Learn4Life quickly realized that in order to reach students’ heads, we needed to reach their hearts. So, we designed the Trauma-Resilient Educational Communities (TREC ) Model which is based on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) science and protocols. TREC is an active approach to understanding trauma. We do more than explain the effects of trauma and encourage understanding amongst our teachers, counselors and staff. All our employees are trained and receive credentials in the foundations...

COMMENTARY, JUNE 8, 2020, DEBRA DUARDO Nothing would come as a greater relief than to welcome back more than 2 million students to Los Angeles County schools in coming months. That’s where they belong. But when schools reopen, they will not look the same as they did before the pandemic-required shelter-in-place. Our country was a different place three months ago. Today: Protests over racial injustice have rocked the nation. Interaction with friends, neighbors and family has changed as the...

By Ali Tadayon and Ashley A. Smith, EdSource, June 5, 2020 The shock and anger that is rippling throughout the country over the police killing of George Floyd hits home for West Contra Costa Unified — a majority Latino and African American district in the San Francisco Bay Area. As the district ends instruction this week, teachers described their efforts to give students the opportunity to talk — even if it is just virtually — about their concerns. Superintendent Matthew Duffy, in a message...

Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg (Keynote speaker from the recent Creating a Resilient Community Conference) shared the excerpt from his book Reaching Teens titled The Traumatic Impact of Racism on Young People and How to Talk About It. This is a valuable resource for anyone interacting with youth and we are providing the excerpt as an attachment here for you to read and share. Also, Dr. Ginsburg will be coming back to our community (virtually) and you’ll be invited to his workshop. Look out for the...

Thursday, June 11, 2020 Education Upended, We're Back! Please join us for the ongoing community discussion of "A Better Normal — Education Upended". We bring bring our focus back to the future. Using our breakout session format, we will identify the strategies and lessons learned that we want to bring into the future of school, and ways in which we might do that. How do we create physical and psychological safety, especially in the face of so much uncertainty? What strategies can we use to...

A wise black woman Dr. Maya Angelou once said, "When we know better, we do better." Join us for the #educateyourself virtual BOOK CLUB where we will be learning how to better support the black youth who we are teaching. We will be reading, ""The Guide for White Women Who Teach Black Boys" by Eddie Moore Jr. The group is facilitated by Katie Paetz, Jeanne Casteen, and Dr. Andi Fetzner. The book club is affiliated with Origins Training and the Arizona Alliance of Black School Educators. Sign...

JUNE 3, 2020| LISA IRISH | ARIZONA EDUCATION NEWS SERVICE When COVID-19 hit the Navajo Nation, it limited students’ educational opportunities after schools closed, eliminated essential school services, exposed ongoing inequities, and made health and economic hardships families face worse. Navajo health officials said COVID-19 started spreading across the nation after a tribal member attended a basketball tournament in early March then went to a church revival the next day in Chilchinbeto, a...