Tagged With "Learning"
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2017 Spring Webinar Series: Trauma-Informed Approaches in Minnesota Schools
April 12, noon-1:30: Trauma-Informed Approaches in Minnesota Schools Dr. Mark Sander, Hennepin County; Stacy Bender-Fayette and Sharleen Zeman-Sperle, Peacemaker Resources Many Minnesota schools are trying innovative approaches to promote social emotional learning and to make the classroom a safe learning environment for children who have experienced trauma. This webinar is a chance to hear from three such innovators: Dr. Mark Sander, a psychologist working in the Minneapolis Public Schools...
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COVID19 Re-Imagines School-Home-Ed Disciplinary Practices w/Trauma-aware Zero-Punishment Conscious Discipline to stop Abuse at its source!
ACE's & COVID-19 - Change is coming: Ethos is, as ethos does - Are we all on-board with the following ethos?
ETHOS: If a child commits a criminally-prosecutable act then it is a matter for doctors, not police (for HIPPA, not FERPA)! Well? Onboard?
If one grasps the prior, the following is then readily self-evident: CORPORAL PUNISHMENT lays the foundation for abuse and occurs in 80% of households and 15% of schools. Corporal Punishment implicitly perpetuates, condones and promotes th
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An Interview with Alfonso Ramirez on Trauma Informed Schools
In 2016, the Oregon School-Based Health Alliance (OSBHA) worked to pass a bill to pilot trauma informed schools and funds were allocated to support two pilot schools, Tigard High School (THS) in Tigard, OR and Central High School (CHS) in Independence, OR. This is the third year of the pilot. OSBHA has been providing technical assistance to the two schools, working closely with the Trauma Informed Schools Coordinators’ hired to transform the schools. Alfonso Ramirez is the coordinator at...
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Are you a Resilience Champion in your school?
Spring is the time for rebirth and new beginnings! After some much needed rest, we go back to the classroom for the last few months with our students. At Origins, we have been lucky enough to host a number of teachers (and their teams) just like you who want the best for the students and for the school. Their success starts with you! After completing the first round of The Resilience Champion Certificate of 2018, we have 23 graduates putting their action plans to work. Some settings that...
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Creative Expression Webinars now offered at times that work for you!
Engaging webinars that will equip you with new tools to empower kids. Learn how to use creative expression to help kids develop important social-emotional learning skills and build resilience.
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Curbing the Spread of COVID-19, Anxiety, and Learning Loss for Youth Behind Bars [blogs.edweek.org]
By Sarah D. Sparks, Education Week, May 4, 2020 As educators and leaders juggle remote learning schedules, food distribution, and how to get kindergartners to sit still on Zoom meetings, there's one particularly vulnerable group of students in danger of falling off the education radar: students in the juventile justice system. Coronavirus is spreading rapidly in pre- and post-trial correctional facilities across the United States, and the challenges of social distancing for students in...
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District finds that creating more trauma-informed schools requires a change of culture [thenotebook.org]
“The world of thinking about trauma, the importance of school climate and social-emotional learning is 20, 30, 40 years behind the world of instruction." Joanna Schwartz, a 2nd-grade teacher at Eliza B. Kirkbride Elementary School, was about to take a scheduled break and desperately needed a place to have peace and quiet. But the only place she could find was a broom closet. A few years earlier, in another school, Schwartz said teachers were baffled by a 3rd grader who continually fell...
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Education Transformations - Providing Soc/Emot Training to Schools & More
Education Transformations is a company that works with districts, schools, teachers, and other organizations to improve Social/Emotional Intelligence (EQ), and what we call Relational Competency. We are San Diego, CA based, but can travel.
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Educational Trauma
Greetings! As a clinical and forensic psychologist and P16 educator, I am very concerned about the ACEs in education. I believe Educational Trauma is the "inadvertent perpetration and perpetuation of victimization by educational systems against...
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Four Core Priorities for Trauma-Informed Distance Learning [kqed.org]
By Kara Newhouse Apr 6 Trauma-informed teaching cannot be simplified to cookie-cutter practices. Take this example: a teacher worked with a student to develop a silent signal that he could use when he needed extra breaks during class. Hearing how well it worked, another teacher tried to apply the signal without first building a relationship with the student. It bombed. With the second teacher, the signal became “an angry ear tug instead of a trauma-informed ear tug,” said Alex Shevrin Venet...
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FREE MASTER CLASS FOR EDUCATORS:
FREE MASTER CLASS FOR EDUCATORS: "The Top 10 Truths Every Teacher Needs to Know About Trauma" This 60-minute Master Class is an opportunity for teachers to take their FIRST STEP into becoming "trauma-informed." Learn how trauma impacts your students' brains, bodies and behavior, and the approaches that can make your job easier and less overwhelming! TUESDAY, May 7th @1pm (PST) - ONLINE Certificate of Attendance available for attendees Link for Deets: https://www.traumacamp.com/masterclass...
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From Trauma Informed To Trauma Transformed: Achieving Post-Traumatic GROWTH for the Youths In Our Most Disenfranchised Public Schools and Communities
Roberto Rivera was a troubled, addicted youth engaged in criminal behavior who discovered his path to transformation in the pit of his traumatic pain. He harnessed the fire of early childhood trauma to change himself from being a problem to being a solution, not just in his own life, but also in the lives of many, many other under-privileged and under-performing young people. The name of his solution is Fulfill The Dream (FTD). FTD is a unique, hip-hop(e) based, Social Emotional Learning...
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Good Choices FEEL Good - An Early SEL Lesson from Grandma Boom / ORAEYC Blog
The little baby dinosaur was afraid to come out to play.....teaching empathy
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How Severe, Ongoing Stress can Affect a Child's Brain [Associated Press via kstp.com]
A quiet, unsmiling little girl with big brown eyes crawls inside a carpeted cubicle, hugs a stuffed teddy bear tight, and turns her head away from the noisy classroom. The safe spaces, quiet times and breathing exercises for her and the other preschoolers at the Verner Center for Early Learning are designed to help kids cope with intense stress so they can learn. But experts hope there's an even bigger benefit — protecting young bodies and brains from stress so persistent that it becomes...
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Schools Spotlight Social, Emotional Learning Amid Complex Times [fosters.com]
By Hadley Barndollar, Fosters.com, October 20, 2019 In a second-grade classroom at New Franklin Elementary School, a warm flurry of compliments. Seated in a circle, girls praise each other’s dresses and sweatshirts. A boy gives his friend kudos for helping him clean up after an activity the previous week. They all murmur the teacher-advised response — “thank you” — through toothy smiles. It’s a lesson on compliments. Down the hallway, in a first-grade circle, students talk about inclusion...
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Schools Spotlight Social, Emotional Learning Amid Complex Times [fosters.com]
By Hadley Barndollar, Fosters.com, October 20, 2019 In a second-grade classroom at New Franklin Elementary School, a warm flurry of compliments. Seated in a circle, girls praise each other’s dresses and sweatshirts. A boy gives his friend kudos for helping him clean up after an activity the previous week. They all murmur the teacher-advised response — “thank you” — through toothy smiles. It’s a lesson on compliments. Down the hallway, in a first-grade circle, students talk about inclusion...
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Self- Regulation Begins with Dogs, Tense Knots and Calm Socks
Self-Regulation Begins with Dogs, Tense Knots and Calm Socks Originally posted to ORAEYC, February 19, 2019 | Janai Mestrovich, M.S. We were all barking like dogs that were upset on all fours in the preK classroom. Then I used the Breathing Sphere to guide 20 preK children to take slow, deep belly button breaths to release the mad dog tension. As we all slowly exhaled and released the tight knots of tension, we were able to become calm dogs. The sounds of tense mad dogs had filled the room...
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Superkid Power Guidebook
In Southern Oregon, Janai Mestrovich, MS, Early Learning & Child Development, labels her curriculum Empowering Superkids. The focus is on pre-K and Kindergarten kids and teaching them to know her/himself and tap inner resources of mind/body/emotions/breathing and have skills to make good choices and feel like a SUPERKID. Teaching self awareness, self respect and communication/collaboration are essential towards resiliency. Janai has developed and taught the Superkid Guidebook over a 40...
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Kids Artwork - The Key to Communications & Goal Setting
Crayons can do wonders. Not just to make colorful rainbows and unicorns but as a vital tool used for communication between students and between the student and their teachers and parents. Janai Mestrovich (BS/MS, Family & Child Development, Ashland, OR) incorporates kid art into her SuperKid Power curriculum. Here are several examples from the kids (pre-K and Kindergarten) reflecting goals the kids said they were thinking about or that concerned them. in the first example, a young boy...
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Learn4Life Staff Learns De-Escalation Techniques
At a recent Professional Development (PD), staff and teachers at Learn4Life resource centers throughout the San Fernando Valley and Northern Los Angeles County, learned about de-escalation techniques. The PD provided the staff with resources designed to equip them to organize their thinking and calmly respond to and effectively de-escalate situations to avoid a potential crisis. The techniques they learned included: Defining the behavior and how to approach a situation QTIP! (Quit Taking It...
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Learning @ Home? Try This @ Home!
Hi! This graphic is an excerpt from my r ecent blog post on Documentation in Early Childhood Learning & Wellness. If you find it helpful, consider subscribing to my blog @ Wert Knowing . It explores: How to Vision, Learn & Be Well with Children in a Pandemic Connectional Mindsets, Heart-sets, Environments & Practices How Horses Influence My Work Cheers, Jodi @Carey S. Sipp (ACEs Connection Staff)
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Many of NYC’s bilingual special education students don’t get the right services. Remote learning has made it even harder. [ny.chalkbeat.org]
By Reema Amin, Chalkbeat New York, April 30, 2020 After years of searching in vain for the right school for her son, Erendira Matamoros was hopeful she found a good fit. David, a 14-year-old who is autistic and primarily speaks Spanish, is legally entitled to a small special education classroom led by a bilingual teacher, but that’s hard to come by in New York City. Only about a third of the roughly 5,500 students who required small bilingual special education classrooms this fall were...
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The Focus Room: A Calming, Welcoming Space to Restore Receptivity and Readiness to Learn
As part of the Trauma Informed approach to instruction, the staff at Learn4Life Innovation High School recently created a Focus Room at the National City resource center. The Focus Room provides a space to facilitate restorative processes for students who need a break to refocus or who are not meeting school expectations. In this space, staff assist students and guide them to redirect, recover, and/or return to an internal state conducive to learning. Students can request to use the room or...
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Third Grader Learns Bullying Others Makes Him Feel Worse Inside
Teaching self and mutual respect to eliminate bullying
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Reframing Undesired Behaviors as an Aspect of Learning, not Punishment
At the Chula Vista, National City, and Linda Vista resource centers of Learn4Life Innovation High School San Diego, only four students were suspended during the 2016-17 school year – less than 1 percent of the student population of more than 500 students. For the leadership team and staff at Innovation High School this rate was still too high. The team and staff embraced further training on restorative practices, positive behavior supports and interventions in order to better support student...
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Re: Third Grader Learns Bullying Others Makes Him Feel Worse Inside
Thank you, Matt, for sharing Janai Mestrovich's powerful post of her third grade student, Greg. Please know your post was highlighted on stopbullying.gov 's recent email to their list serves from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at 200 Independence Avenue, S.W., Washington, DC, 20201.
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Re: Educational Trauma
I was a teacher for the last 7 years and have had to leave permanently because I felt the stress created by the education system was causing real harm to the students, their families, and myself. The environment triggered me because it reminded me of my own dysfunctional family - never talk about the real problems and push all issues under the rug, and find a worthy scapegoat. The scapegoat was the administration. I tried everything to stay in education - I adored working with the kids - but...
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Re: Educational Trauma
Dear Kary, Thank you for commenting on my post. I was very touched by your experience, and the clarity with which you see it. Karen Horowitz wrote "White Chalk Crime," and says that teachers are abused and scapegoated by the educational system. She compiled 678 pages of stories... May I help with your noble cause of shedding light on teacher trauma? Please email me drgray(at)me(dot)com if you are interested. Teachers need a team of heroes! Warmly, Lee-Anne
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Re: Educational Trauma
Lee-Anne, I am so sorry for the delay in response! I will send you an email shortly. Kary
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Re: Educational Trauma
Great point often children are shown the hand of avoidance rather than the hand of compassion. Have you read up on this concept of sanctuary trauma?
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Re: Educational Trauma
Thanks! No, I hadn't heard of Sanctuary Trauma. Thank you for mentioning it! Reminds me of Freyd's Betrayal Trauma . Yes, children need empathy and compassion. Aiming to mitigate Educational Trauma with EmpathicEducation for a CompassionateNation. Here's a blog about it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...-thin_b_7696404.html Kindly, Lee-Anne
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Re: Educational Trauma
yeah i use freyds work in my class that i use for teachers especially those teachers working in the criminal justice system
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Re: Learning @ Home? Try This @ Home!
Wow, this is great. Thank you, Jodi Wert. I have shared it with my children who have toddlers. My daughter is also an early childhood teacher. I love the questions you ask to make me reflect on the learning......it is so important to ask the right questions so that we reflect on what we need to see.
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Trauma Informed 21st Century Learning
The truth is children have and are experiencing adversity, parents have experienced and are experiencing adversity and teachers and staff have and are experiencing adversity.
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Understanding Trauma's Impact on Learning: A pathway to creating a school culture where every child living through adversity can grow alongside peers [my.aasa.org]
Susan Cole, director of the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative at Harvard Law School and Massachusetts Advocates for Children, believes the most effective school settings weave trauma sensitivity into other affairs of the school day. The principal of a small elementary school in central Massachusetts was approached by his staff with a request. They asked about their school becoming more responsive to trauma owing to the number of children in their classrooms who seemed to be facing...
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Using Creative Expression to build SEL skills in Elementary-aged Kids
For over twenty years, Art with Heart has been spreading the healing power of creative expression to kids experiencing trauma or adversity. Our therapeutic activity books for youth, and resources for the adults who serve them transform pain into possibility for young people around the world. Now in our third decade, we’ll reach 3.5 million more kids through our innovative online learning community and through collaboration with many personal, unique partnerships. Join certified trainer Lulu...
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How D.C. Schools Can Help Traumatized Students Succeed
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Re: The Focus Room: A Calming, Welcoming Space to Restore Receptivity and Readiness to Learn
Would you be willing to share the referral/request form? I would love to see the reflection and restorative questions you use.
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Re: The Focus Room: A Calming, Welcoming Space to Restore Receptivity and Readiness to Learn
Thank you for expressing your interest Sara. Please see the two attached documents. We primarily focus on helping students reflect on their needs and their behavior, while helping them to also consider the needs of their fellow students, community members, and the learning environment in general. Please let us know if you would like more information. Thank you!
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Re: Education Transformations - Providing Soc/Emot Training to Schools & More
Hi, Carla: Thanks for posting information about your services. I, too, saw the article about the benefits of teachers learning about SEL. One question: Have you integrated ACEs science into your curriculum? Cheers, Jane
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Re: Education Transformations - Providing Soc/Emot Training to Schools & More
Hi Jane, thanks for your interest. While Ed Trans is relatively new to the ACEs concepts, so we have not integrated their science in directly, indirectly we feel our curriculum supports children in working through some of these, through our person centered foundational approach, which elicits empathy, authenticity and non-judgement.
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Re: Education Transformations - Providing Soc/Emot Training to Schools & More
Wonderful and exciting to hear that this is being implemented! Working with at risk and homeless youth, they lack the tools necessary to be socially accepted by their peers, to begin with. So, if the staff, teachers and students have the tools to be socially and cognitively conscious about how they treat others' our kids will have a better chance at succeeding in a system that sometimes turn them into outcasts. Regards, Monica
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Re: Education Transformations - Providing Soc/Emot Training to Schools & More
Exactly Monica!! However it is not being implemented much yet. It is available though. Money and time issues seem to still prevail over its priority, unfortunately.
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Re: Education Transformations - Providing Soc/Emot Training to Schools & More
And it's critical that education about ACEs science be included in any curriculum, so that teachers, administrators, etc., have a complete understanding of why kids and adults behave and react the way they do! We figure that there are several hundred schools that are learning about ACEs science and are integrating trauma-informed and resilience-building tools, such as SEL and restorative practice. It's definitely a drop in the bucket, but it's a trend that's growing rapidly.
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Re: Reframing Undesired Behaviors as an Aspect of Learning, not Punishment
Hello Nevin, This is so exciting to see! I hope there will be a replication of these programs. I am wondering how you prepare your staff to work in these programs? What is your model of supervision and evaluation? Do teachers know their own ACE score and stories? I look forward to hearing more! Jessie
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Re: Reframing Undesired Behaviors as an Aspect of Learning, not Punishment
Jessie, thank you for your questions. We conduct training and professional development specifically around Trauma Informed Practices. During this training we do allow our staff to assess themselves on the ACES survey as we discuss and process concepts and practices within the Trauma Informed framework . We also provide spaces for staff to share and reflect on their behavior and collaboration with our team and with students, in the context of developing deeper understandings of how our trauma...
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Re: An Interview with Alfonso Ramirez on Trauma Informed Schools
Loved the info about "student advisory committee called the Trauma Informed Equity Committee which has created a pilot student climate survey to get a good look into how students experience teacher and peer relationships, the student environment, and equity in their education." Wondering if they educate students about ACEs and if so, how is that done? Also loved how he talked about the subtle nature of the outcomes of this work but also the fact they were able to drop their disciplinary...
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Re: Learning @ Home? Try This @ Home!
@Adriana van Altvorst , I'm glad it resonates! Thanks for the note. Cheers, Jodi