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Beyond Consequences is excited to announce that our Call for Proposals for the 2018 Fall Trauma-Informed School Conference has been extended. If you have a great story to share about your experience in working with students who’ve had adverse childhood experiences, we would love to hear from you! Here are some examples of sessions that fit in at our nationally recognized conference: Administrative/School-Wide Track • Mindfulness Instead of Suspension • Special Education Law & Advocacy •...

A teenage brain is a fascinating, still-changing place. There's a lot going on: social awareness, risk-taking, peer pressure; all are heightened during this period. Until relatively recently, it was thought that the brain was only actively developing during childhood, but in the last two decades, researchers have confirmed that the brain continues to develop during adolescence — a period of time that can stretch from the middle school years into early adulthood. "We were always under the...

Aside from the students, there isn't much to suggest that this might be a classroom. It certainly doesn't look like one. Instead of in rows of desks, students sit at tables, on couches, or along padded benches that look like they came straight out of a restaurant. There are treadmills in a corner. It's quiet reading time, and a girl with crayon-colored hair pulls out a large blue book with Alcoholics Anonymous written in gold on the spine. This is Independence Academy in Brockton,...

The two 9th-grade girls heard the laughing the minute they walked into their third-period class that December morning at Oakland’s Fremont High School. And they knew why: a video of one of the girls being slapped by a classmate had gone viral among students on social media. It was one of those moments that could have gone bad in a hurry — like so many others had at Fremont High, a school that had more suspensions last year than any other in the Oakland Unified School District. Both girls...

Claudia Rojas had a regular routine she followed most days during the 2012-13 school year, the year she took a job as one of three principals at the newly opened Augustus F. Hawkins High School in South Los Angeles. She would get up in the morning, have breakfast and then cry her way to work. Hawkins, as it’s known, is a part of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Pilot School program , which was established in 2007 to relieve overcrowding at Belmont High School in central L.A. The...

Janai Mestrovich (BS/MS, Family & Child Development), teacher and developer of 'Superkid Power' (Ashland, OR) passed this along to me regarding how she uses finger activated mood card to measure temperature and kid stress levels: 40 Pre-K children learned how to measure their stress level this morning by measuring hand temp. with mood cards. Blue, happy-peaceful-very calm; Green, calm; Red, tight muscles/upset; Black Tense/grit teeth. We chanted and drummed appropriately - tense drumming...

What happens when you don’t blame kids for bad behavior? An elementary school in Columbus, Ohio is trying to find out. Katherine Reynolds Lewis writes: The Ohio-based photographer Maddie McGarvey spent a couple days at Ohio Ave recently meeting and spending time with the students, teachers, and administration trying to shift teachers’ perspective on trauma and their relationships with children. “How are [the children] going to learn a positive way of dealing with conflict if we’re not the...

Scott Barry Kaufman was placed in special education classes as a kid. He struggled with auditory information processing and with anxiety. But with the support of his mother, and some teachers who saw his creativity and intellectual curiosity, Kaufman ended up with degrees from Yale and Cambridge. Now he's a psychologist who cares passionately about a holistic approach to education, one that recognizes the capacity within each child. He recently edited a volume of experts writing about how to...

As a district, we are dedicated to trauma-informed practices and teaching resilience in a manner that is supported by science. At this point, we need our state and national leaders to catch up to the classroom.” says Katie Paetz, Osborn Governing Board President.

When one of my four preschools celebrated Cinco de Mayo, they held a parade to kick off the fiesta. Since all of my students were marching in the parade, of course, I joined in the fun and provided extra support as we marched 60 students around several city blocks. I was the caboose at the very end of the parade line as we marched two by two in the neighborhood. My partner, 4-year-old Janielys (the name is changed), seemed very excited to be marching with the nurse! My students are primarily...

As a district, we are dedicated to trauma-informed practices and teaching resilience in a manner that is supported by science. At this point, we need our state and national leaders to catch up to the classroom.” says Katie Paetz, Osborn Governing Board President.

"You will be a principal one day and will be blogging about your journey." If I had heard these words early in my career I would have never believed it, but here I am! As the principal of Fall-Hamilton Elementary, a small urban school in Nashville where 70 percent of students come from underprivileged homes and 80 percent are minorities, I get the privilege of high fiving and hugging nearly 320 students in pre-k to 4 th grade, every single morning. I am fortunate to work with and learn from...