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By Adrian Horton, Photo: Argot Pictures, The Guardian, August 15, 2022 T here’s a moment early in Let the Little Light Shine, a riveting documentary on one community’s fight to preserve their grade school, when it becomes clear that Chicago’s National Teachers Academy is no ordinary place. It’s a school assembly, and the students – overwhelmingly Black and brown children from the city’s South Side, kindergarten through eighth grade – pack benches in the cafeteria. Two of the older students...

By Camilla Mutoni Griffiths and Nicky Sullivan, Photo: Maskot/Getty Images, Scientific American, August 19, 2022 “Where are the Native Americans now?” asked fifth grade students in an Iowa City classroom last year. There are many ways their teacher, Melanie Hester, might have answered. She could have pointed out that today Native Americans live in cities and towns across the U.S. About 20 percent live on reservations , and Hester could have used that to open a discussion of the U.S.

By Mark Keierleber, Photo: NASSP.org, The74, August 22, 2022 Shortly after the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School that left 13 people dead, then-Principal Frank DeAngelis got a phone call. On the other end of the line was a school leader from Kentucky who had endured a shooting of his own just two years earlier. “He called me up and said, ‘Frank, you don’t even know what you need, but here’s my number,’” DeAngelis said during an event Monday at the Columbine Memorial in Littleton,...

By Jennifer De Forest and Karen Vanausdal, Greater Good Magazine, Augsut 22, 2022 In the tumult of shifting to virtual school during the pandemic, one of our children came bouncing out of her room full of energy. This was a noticeable shift from her usual subdued mood after a full day of Zoom school. What was different? Her teacher had left the digital meeting room open for three extra minutes so that students could connect with one another after their lesson. “It was like being at our...

Join PACEs Connection's Lara Kain and other leaders to discuss policy perspectives on trauma informed strategies in schools, including an update on California's $4.1 billion investment in Community Schools.

PACEs Connection's interactive sessions focus on trauma-informed education and the impact of policy and system changes. This course will be facilitated by Lara Kain, PACEs Connection's educational consultant, and will be a combination of lecture, discussion, and collaboration. This session will use the RYSE center Interacting Layers of Trauma and Healing as a framework. Policy and Systems, Trauma-Informed Education and your Community PACEs Initiative Outline the importance of including...

On July 3, 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law Senate Bill 188 also known as the Creating a Respectful and Open Workplace for Natural Hair (CROWN) Act. The CROWN Act amends the California Education Code and the Fair Employment and Housing Act’s definition of race to include traits historically associated with race, including hair texture and protective hairstyles. Protective hairstyles include, but are not limited to, “braids, locks, and twists.” The legislation makes California the...

“Sometimes we need to be reminded that we are a powerful movement, and collectively we are making a difference,” says Lara Kain, PACEs Connection education consultant. She joins this week’s History. Culture. Trauma. podcast with fellow educators and hosts, PACEs Connection CEO Ingrid Cockhren, and director of communities, Mathew Portell. Cockhren and Portell are focused on the start of the 2022-2023 school year, and welcome colleague Kain o n Thursday, August 25 at 1 p.m. PT, 4 p.m. ET, when...

For the past three years, Karen Bacigalupo, as assistant principal at Fall-Hamilton Elementary, part of the Metro Nashville Public Schools, worked with former principal Mathew Portell to integrate PACEs into their school. Bacigalupo took over as principal last March when Portell joined PACEs Connection as director of communities. Although she had heard about the science of positive and adverse childhood experiences through social media and in her research over the past six years, it was only...

Please join us for our series Education Upended: Talking Out of Turn. This series features a conversation facilitated by Lara Kain, PACEsConnection Education Consultant, with special guests on education related current events and hot topics. We will use a trauma-informed and PACEs science aware lens to examine what is going on K-12 education, what needs changing, and strategies being used in the field to disrupt harmful policies and make positive changes in the system. August Session,...

Photo: Rachel Zein for the Texas Tribune Author: Brian Lopez, August 11, 2022 Author of 'Critical Race Theory' Ban Says Texas School Can Still Teach About Racism For the past year, Texas educators have struggled with a new law targeting how history and race are taught in the state’s public schools. Now, eight months after the enactment of a law designed to de-emphasize the role of slavery and racism in American history in Texas social studies classes, state Sen. Bryan Hughes , R-Mineola, the...

(Congratulations to Dr. Audrey Hokoda and Dr. Shulamit Ritblatt for their steadfast dedication as Editors of this textbook. Long-standing San Diego Trauma-Informed Guide Team (SDTIGT) member, there are more SDTIGT members who are co-authors. Congratulations to all contributors!) From Trauma to Resiliency: Trauma-Informed Practices for Working with Children, Families, Schools, and Communities Edited by Shulamit Natan Ritblatt, San Diego State University, California, USA and Audrey Hokoda ,...