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By Joie Tyrrell for Newsday, September 29, 2019 District officials are touting a newly created wellness room at Ward Melville High School as a lesson in serenity, where the surroundings help teachers and staff de-stress over the course of a hectic workday. The "WellVille" classroom, part of the wellness program in the Three Village school district, has been transformed into an "experience," with soft lighting, relaxing music, and lounge chairs, school officials said. The room, believed to be...

I am sharing my remarks from the press conference held by Congresswoman Lauren Underwood to bring attention to the impact of gun violence in schools. We are asking for the Senate to bring the Background Check Bill to the floor for a vote. Democracy is built on the voice of “The People” and yesterday, I had the ultimate privilege of being one of the voices. I spoke on behalf of school nurses across our country who are managing the aftermath of school shootings or the stress of active shooter...

Perhaps the biggest challenge we face when accessing information is confronting our biases before we are able to unpack the opinions and insights of other people. Often these biases are unconscious or implicit, meaning we might not even be aware we have them. But these implicit biases have real implications, and educators are no less immune than students. Research has already shown, for instance, that adults see black girls as less innocent than white peers, even before they meet them.

“A trauma-informed, culturally responsive lens must be a part of everything we do.” This statement by Laura Norton-Cruz, Director of the Alaska Resilience Initiative, sums up the key message of last week’s Senate Afterschool Caucus briefing for Congressional staff which focused on “Afterschool Programs and a Trauma-Informed Approach.” On Wednesday, Sept. 11, the Senate Afterschool Caucus* — in partnership with the Afterschool Alliance, Alaska Children’s Trust – Alaska Afterschool Network,...

Published in Usable Knowledge from Harvard Graduate School of Education RESEARCH STORIES School Discipline Linked to Later Consequences Study finds clear and long-lasting negative effects for students attending high-suspension schools — particularly minority boys BY: Emily Boudreau POSTED: September 16, 2019 Since the emergence of zero tolerance discipline policies in the 1990s, schools have increasingly been relying on suspensions as a behavioral management tactic. However, these policies...

Teaching Tolerance Issue 62, Summer 2019, By Carrie Gaffney Increasingly, we are seeing pushes for trauma-sensitive and trauma-informed schools. We know that traumatic stress can have long-term health effects on developing brains and, in response, districts across the United States are acknowledging the role that trauma plays in students’ achievement opportunities. But how well are districts defining trauma? And how well do educators understand what it really means to practice...

On a sunny day in April, I drove to Head-Royce School in the hills of Oakland, California, to join circle time in Bret Turner ’s first-grade classroom. I had asked Turner if I could sit in on some lessons after reading an article he wrote describing how he teaches about some surprising topics -- like race and class -- in an elementary school classroom. I wanted to see what that looked like and what kind of conversations first-graders at this private school would have around such complicated...

By Fix School Discipline, September 16, 2019 SB 419 will help keep students in school, increase student success, and increase high school graduation Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation to eliminate suspensions for minor misbehaviors and protect California students from discriminatory and harmful school climates. Under Senate Bill 419, which was introduced by Senator Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), school districts will no longer be permitted to use defiance or disruption, as justification...

September 18, 2019 by TAYLOR SWAAK A s California this month expanded a statewide ban on suspending younger students for defiant behavior, lessons on how this increasingly sweeping school discipline reform may play out can be found in Los Angeles, which barred such suspensions on an even broader scale six years ago. Previously in California, “willful defiance” suspensions were not permitted in grades K-3. Beginning in July 2020, under the new state law , they will be prohibited for students...

September 18 2019 I n 2017, the Istanbul-based organization Maya Foundation (“Maya Vakfı” in Turkish), in collaboration with the Education Ministry, launched the Trauma-Informed Schools project, in an aim to help children and train teachers to spots the signs of trauma and learn how to help those affected. As part of the project, so far, 1,055 teachers across 20 schools in Turkey have received training.... Many teachers were quoted as saying by the report that after receiving the relevant...

By Conor P. Williams and Rosario Quiroz Villareal, LA School Report, September 16, 2019 It was a busy, if often frustrating, summer for the Trump administration’s many efforts to destabilize U.S. immigration policies. Federal judges ruled in August that, under a longstanding legal agreement, the administration was required to provide detained children at the border with “edible food, clean water, soap and toothpaste.” So the administration announced that it would write new regulations to...

By Alliance for a Healthier Generation, September 16, 2019 Congratulations to the 2019 winners of America’s #HealthiestSchools! Keep up the great work! See which schools made @HealthierGen’s list: HealthiestSchools.org