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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 

Two years after Edutopia filmed trauma-informed practices at a Nashville school, we check in with the principal to see what has changed. By Alex Shevrin Venet September 13, 2019 There is no arrival at a perfect implementation of trauma-informed practices, and no one knows this better than Mathew Portell, principal of Fall-Hamilton Elementary in Nashville. Portell has been leading Fall-Hamilton’s journey with trauma-informed practices for the past several years, and Edutopia profiled one...

State senator from Memphis sponsored new law By Sam Stockard Updated: September 05, 2019 4:21 PM CT | Published: September 05, 2019 4:16 PM CT Schools across Tennessee will start delving into traumatic experiences in students’ lives as part of a new law targeting “exclusionary” discipline under legislation sponsored by state Sen. Katrina Robinson, a first-term Memphis Democrat. Signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee, Senate Bill 170 requires school systems to come up with plans for assessing...

By Cole Lauterbach | The Center Square Sep 13, 2019 Updated Sep 13, 2019 It's not just a child's home life that can lead to chronic absenteeism. Student attendance generally is higher if the school conditions are better, according to a new report on chronic absenteeism. Seventeen percent of Illinois’ public school students were considered “chronically absent” in that they missed more than 10 percent of school days in a year without a valid excuse. In a new report by Attendance Works and the...

Finally, a “doctor told me NOT to call it a “mental illness” it’s a “mental injury”

By Sharonica Hardin-Bartley and Terry Harris Sep 10, 2019 The night of Saturday, Aug. 24, was a horrific one for all of the schools and children in the St. Louis region. Gun violence or the threat of it tainted two major high school events in St. Louis County and city. School administrators all went cold when they heard the news — just as many parents did, and just as many students did. Just as we did. As school leaders, we live in the shadow of potential violence against our students every...

Michigan’s Spectrum Health is piloting a school-based telehealth program that aims to give rural high school students better access to telemental health services. Greenville Public Schools is partnering with the Grand Rapids-based health system to give students at the high school access to a Master’s-level social worker through a telemedicine portal. The counselor, working out of Spectrum Health’s Lakeview Youth Clinic, can schedule as many as a half-dozen virtual visits a day with students...

By Selena Simmons-Duffin, National Public Radio, September 9, 2019 Plenty of research shows that adverse childhood experiences can lead to depression and other health problems later in life. But researcher Christina Bethell wondered whether positive experiences in childhood could counter that. Her research comes from a personal place. In the 1970s, in a low-income housing complex in Los Angeles, Bethell had a tough childhood. Sometimes she didn't have money for lunch. Sometimes, when a free...

Having been an educator much of my life and attended a lot of school, there is something powerful in my somatic memory about this time of year. It’s a swirling dervish of anticipation, hope... fear, trepidation. It all collides tightly in my belly. I recall the many years of being up early on the first day of school, staring at my toast and jam as nausea rolled through me like short waves - cresting and breaking. I remember standing at the bus stop with my hair parted strictly down the...

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, California Surgeon General, will be the lead witness in a hearing on trauma-informed practices in education on Wednesday, Sept. 11 in the House of Representatives Education and Labor Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education. The hearing is titled "The Importance of Trauma-Informed Practices in Education to Assist Students Impacted by Gun Violence and Other Adversities." Other witnesses include I ngrida Barker, Ed.D. , Associate...

By Sarah Ferguson, Forbes, August 29, 2019 In times of emergency, children are always the most vulnerable. Hurricane Harvey was no exception. Four days after the slow-moving Category 4 storm made landfall near Corpus Christi, Texas, on August 25, 2017, heavy rainfall and winds up to 130 miles per hour had caused billions of dollars in damage and left approximately 13 million people — including 3 million children — in Texas and Louisiana reeling in its wake. "Trauma is trauma regardless of...