Tagged With "Youth Resilience Project"
Blog Post
2019 School Mental Health Webinar Series
Join the Pacific Southwest MHTTC for upcoming distance learning opportunities on key school mental health topics. Together we will advance our understanding of how to build wellness, resilience, and success for the whole school community. Upcoming Webinar: Mental Health and Student Learning Outcomes: An Introduction Mental Health & Student Learning Outcomes Series - Webinar 1 Thursday, March 21 6-7 p.m. ET / 3-4 p.m. PT / 1-2 p.m. HT / 9-10 a.m. ChT Register Are you a school...
Blog Post
75 Calm Down Strategies for Kids
I came across this webpage and wanted to share with my parent and caregiver small groups. My intern typed it up into a handout. Feel free to share.
Blog Post
A Community Approach to Trauma Sensitivity / Making a Difference Conference in MA in November
The 6th Annual Making a Difference Conference for SESPs, Foster/Adoptive and Kinship Caregivers and their Professional Partners will be held in Marlborough, MA on November 14, 2017. The theme is A Community Approach to Trauma Sensitivity. There will be at least two talks will be about ACEs! Speakers/Topics: Keynote: Managing the Hearts and Souls of Many, Dana Royster-Buefort, M.Ed., C.A.G.S. Workshops Tackling ACEs by Building Resilient Communities , Renee D Boynton-Jarrett, MD, ScD . Note:...
Blog Post
A New Program Helps Foster Kids in Orange County Avoid Homelessness when They Age Out of Public Care [ocregister.com]
By Theresa Walker, The Orange County Register, December 20, 2019 For three years after he aged out of foster care, at age 18, Christian was homeless. During that time, he was hit by a car and suffered a traumatic brain injury. He was in a coma for six months and his speech and memory were affected. Over most of the last year he’s lived at The Link, a homeless shelter in Santa Ana. This week, Christian, now 22, moved into his own one-bedroom apartment, in Tustin. That change is the result of...
Blog Post
A School Principal Ponders Pandemic Pedagogy and a Coronavirus Project Plan (4 part series) [culturallyresponsiveleadership.com]
By Joe Truss, Culturally Responsive Leadership, April 5, 2020 I am finally sitting down, after 3 weeks of shelter in place. (sigh) I am just starting to calm down enough to think, and write, and reflect. Here are my reflections on the coronavirus, distance learning, and what the hell it means for our education system. Ok. Here’s the current reality. The coronavirus is spreading and we are averaging a thousand deaths per day, 13,000 deaths as of April 7th, 2020 . I am sure it has gone up, and...
Blog Post
A Trauma-Informed Approach to Teaching Through Coronavirus - for Students Everywhere, Online or Not [washingtonpost.com]
By Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post, March 26, 2020 “Anxiety” is one of the words you hear frequently about our individual and collective reactions to the coronavirus pandemic — which has stopped public life in its tracks in much of the world. Kids are anxious. So are their parents and teachers and principals and superintendents and friends and elected officials. For those people who were anxious before covid-19, the sense of apprehension has only deepened. Given that, this post offers...
Blog Post
ACEs and trauma-informed teaching in the Netherlands
Over the past twenty years several studies have shown that ACEs are common and that there is a strong relationship of these experiences with various health factors. Although these studies have all been very important in helping to establish the frequency of adverse childhood experiences, very little has actually been asked of children themselves. In addition, never before has a direct link been made with what a large, representative group of children (N = 664) say they have experienced in...
Blog Post
ACEs awareness and Compassionate Education Systems - good news from the community
Carla Denner shared an experience with us from the Petaluma City School Board Meeting in March. The topic of discussion was schools being a safe place for all students and those facing immigration issues. She shared with us that she was happy to hear ACES discussed as part of this conversation. Also the wonderful work that Nikki (ACEs fellow) is doing with the Petaluma Schools. Petaluma is an example of a compassionate education system that is working to educate their staff about ACES and...
Blog Post
African-American students with disabilities suspended at disproportionately high rates [edsource.org]
African-American special education students nationwide lose substantially more instruction time due to discipline than their white counterparts, according to a report by The Civil Rights Project at UCLA and the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard University. The report , “Disabling Punishment: The Need for Remedies to the Disparate Loss of Instruction Experienced by Black Students with Disabilities,” extrapolated its findings from federal data from 2014-15 and...
Blog Post
After Freshman Commits Suicide, Dean Secretly Gets Students to Tell “13 Reasons Why Not” (faithit.com)
After losing a freshman, Megan Abbott, to suicide four years ago, Oxford High School’s Dean of Students, Pam Fine, came up with the idea for the project. Pam wrote in a Facebook post on May 2nd: “This has been one of the hardest, but most rewarding weeks for me professionally. A small group of students took a big risk. They decided to start a raw and powerful dialogue about suicide. By putting themselves in front of 1,800 classmates and saying…look, I have a story, too. I have pain. I have...
Blog Post
Afterschool programs and a trauma-informed approach [Afterschool Alliance]
“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,...
Blog Post
Alternative Schools Network in Chicago Takes on Youth Trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
Click here to read the full article on the ASN website The Alternative Schools Network (ASN) Youth Resilience Project is an initiative that grew from the collective desire to develop and provide additional clinical resources for ASN Network schools. The Youth Resilience Project is dedicated to the cause of bringing knowledge, awareness, and support to schools around issues associated with youth trauma. Spreading the knowledge of trauma and its impacts on youth development became a mission of...
Blog Post
An imperative for those in "towers" to connect with the realities of trauma in schools
Boosting SEL in K-12's "Ivory Towers" Educational Leadership October 2018 | Volume 76 | Number 2 The Promise of Social-Emotional Learning Those of us in administration must lift our "social awareness" by getting closer to schools and the people inside them. The superintendent's leadership team for the district where I was working had just finished its Monday morning meeting. One member of that team stopped as he passed by my cubicle to view the large poster I'd recently hung up. It displayed...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
Animated videos help teachers build sense of empathy in students [EdSource.org]
A Silicon Valley educational technology company and researchers from Harvard have teamed up to launch a new series of animated videos next month about the importance of empathy , intended for teachers to use in building students’ social and emotional skills. Developed by ClassDojo’s Big Ideas program and researchers at the Making Caring Common project at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, the series of three short videos, called “Empathy,” are the latest manifestation of a push to move...
Blog Post
Animated videos help teachers build sense of empathy in students [EdSource.org]
A Silicon Valley educational technology company and researchers from Harvard have teamed up to launch a new series of animated videos next month about the importance of empathy , intended for teachers to use in building students’ social and emotional skills. Developed by ClassDojo’s Big Ideas program and researchers at the Making Caring Common project at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, the series of three short videos, called “Empathy,” are the latest manifestation of a push to move...
Blog Post
Announcing: New Trauma-Sensitive Schools Book
I’m delighted to share that my new book Building Trauma-Sensitive Schools: Your Guide to Creating Safe, Supportive Learning Environments for All Students will be released in early 2019 and is now available for pre-order from Brookes Publishing. This book is really about one word — hope. It’s about cultivating hope for all students, including the many who have been affected by childhood trauma. And, it’s also about kindling hope for educators who want to make a positive difference but may...
Blog Post
Pittsburgh's 'Dr. Stress' plans a new program for troubled students [Post-Gazette.com]
Only in this century have science and society come to understand the mental and physical repercussions of a rough childhood. But 18 years after publication of the groundbreaking Adverse Childhood Experiences study and multiple follow-up studies, few resources yet exist to help children contend with or avoid the troubling list of childhood adversity — sexual, verbal and physical abuse; neglect; poverty; community violence; and bullying, among others. These exposures cumulatively scar a...
Blog Post
Polling American K-12 Parents About COVID-19 [edchoice.org]
By Paul Diperna, EdChoice, April 21, 2020 The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting all of our lives in unique ways. Our team has been adapting some of our work to be more responsive to the extraordinary times we are living in right now. One of our goals is to inform policymakers, stakeholders and the public about school choice programs and to better understand choice in the larger context of American K–12 education. That context has gone through a seismic shift during recent months. In partnership...
Blog Post
Practicing Presence: Simple Self-care Strategies for Teachers (stenhouse.com)
Most teachers enter the field of education to make a difference in children’s lives. But many end up, as author Lisa Lucas puts it, “tired, wired, and running in circles.” This leads to many new teachers abandoning the profession or to burnout among veteran teachers. Drawing upon her own experiences, Lisa has written a book to help you more successfully manage the frustration of feeling overwhelmed. Written in an informal, conversational tone, Practicing Presence is filled with ideas,...
Blog Post
Program offers hundreds of young men, boys safe space to heal from ACEs
Dennis McCollins recounts some of the experiences that caused him to harden against the world as a teenager. “There were times I went to more funerals than birthdays,” says McCollins, who is the clinical director of the School Based Health Center at Greenwood Academy in Richmond, Calif. And it took its toll: “I spent time homeless. I got expelled [from school]. I was so angry and upset and mad,” he says. Dennis McCollins Then a man that he met when he was sent to Job Corps as a teen turned...
Blog Post
“Punitive Discipline Policies Have Proven to Be Destructive to Children” [truthout.org]
Janine Jackson: Nothing says America 2018 like a spate of stories on how back-to-school shopping includes bulletproof backpacks. Arming teachers and gearing kids up like commandos are presented as more-or-less reasonable responses to concerns about school safety. Any violence in schools is too much, of course, but a conversation about school safety that’s focused on guns and bullets is a narrow and distorted conversation. Recasting our definition of a “safe school environment” could lead us...
Blog Post
ConVal High School's Story: Becoming Trauma-Informed for Substance Abuse Prevention
As a student assistance counselor, I regularly receive flashy emails from various organizations promoting materials for drug-free schools. Secretly I roll my eyes and strike the trash icon. “Drug free schools - ha, right?!” It may sound cynical or jaded that I don’t believe in drug-free high schools. It’s not that. The truth is I don’t believe a drug-free high school exists. This isn’t from a lack of effort or concern. As a product of the “Just Say No” era, schools have worked for decades to...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
Curriculum immerses students in impacts of slave trade (dailycamera.com)
Canoeing through a historic rice plantation in Charleston inhabited by alligators in early June, Clara Denham got a small taste of what it would have been like for slaves clearing swamps and harvesting rice in the south's oppressive heat. The eighth-grader, who attends Broomfield's Aspen Creek K-8, challenged herself to learn about slavery by joining a school district trip to Charleston, S.C., to see firsthand what was one of the country's busiest ports during the slave trade. Clara was one...
Blog Post
Dena Simmons: Without Context, Social-Emotional Learning Can Backfire [edsurge.com]
A few years ago, I had the great fortune to meet Bronx native Dena Simmons on a fellowship trip and hear about her life’s work and experience. She’s an educator, a TED speaker , and currently, the assistant director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence —not to mention a keynote speaker at the EdSurge Fusion conference later this year. What I didn’t realize at the time was just how much of a confluence there would be between her work and the current trendiness of one particular...
Blog Post
Development and Implementation of Standards for Social and Emotional Learning in the 50 States (selpractices.org)
Development and Implementation of Standards for Social and Emotional Learning in the 50 States · SEL Thrive { "@context" : "http://schema.org", "@type" : "Organization", "name" : "SEL Thrive", "url" : "https://www.selpractices.org/", "logo": "https://www.selpractices.org/apple-touch-icon-180x180.png", "sameAs" : [ "https://www.facebook.com/", "https://twitter.com/" ], // "contactPoint" : [{ // "@type" : "ContactPoint", // "telephone" : "+1-555-555-555", // "contactType" : "customer service"...
Blog Post
Does Mindfulness Actually Work in Schools? (theatlantic.com)
A research team in Chicago has spent a year studying whether students who are taught to be in touch with their emotions do better academically. And they say the initial results are promising. Perhaps counterintuitively, when kids take a break from a classroom lesson on the solar system to spend a quiet moment alone watching a three-minute nature video, or participate in a teacher-guided breathing exercise with their class after lunch, they seem to become better overall students. That’s...
Blog Post
Dovetail Learning's TOOLBOX a resource for schools seeking to be Trauma-Informed
Bryan Clement, Dovetail Learning, gave a compelling presentation to the ACEs Connection community coalition in late January. He began with a video showing how kids are putting social and emotional skills into action in their school settings: TOOLBOX clearly offers great tools for strengthening relationships between folks of all ages. It also provides the language and framework creating a strong relationship-based foundation for schools seeking to become Trauma Informed. Bryan shared the...
Blog Post
Elaine Miller-Karas Helps Bring the Dalai Lama's Vision to Light
Elaine Miller-Karas, executive director and co-founder of the Trauma Resource Institute, has been invited to attend the launch in New Delhi, India, of a special program initiated by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Miller-Karas is one of the key developers of the Trauma Resiliency Model® (TRM) and the Community Resiliency Model® (CRM) – biological-based models designed to help people recover from toxic stress. Miller-Karas has shepherded the Trauma Resource Institute since its birth in 2006 into...
Blog Post
Engaging Parents, Developing Leaders
A Self-Assessment and Planning Tool for Nonprofits and Schools By the Annie E. Casey Foundation This publication introduces an assessment and planning tool to help nonprofits evaluate their parent engagement efforts and chart a path toward deeper partnerships with parents and caregivers. The tool spans just eight pages, with accompanying text outlining how to use it, how to assess its results and what real-world strategies and programs are already in play — and working — to boost parent...
Blog Post
Essentials for an ACEs, trauma-informed, resilience-building school system
About 120 educators from in and around Sacramento County met on Saturday, Oct. 17, for day two of Beyond Trauma: Building a Resilient Sacramento , which was held at the gorgeous campus of Meristem in Fair Oaks. The workshop was co-sponsored by...
Blog Post
Federal Grants for Trauma-Informed Interventions in Schools
As Elizabeth Prewitt reported in the recent blog post-- President Trump signs opioid legislation with significant trauma provisions -- the Support for Patients and Communities Act (H.R.6) includes significant provisions increasing trauma-informed best practices in multiple settings. Section 7134. Grants to improve trauma support services and mental health care for children and youth in educational settings authorizes $50,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2019 through 2023 for these grants.
Blog Post
Fitting Together Art empowers children with disabilities [Islander]
J ennifer Lunzer never felt like she fit in at school. "Art was my safe place where I was good at something and did not have to feel embarrassed about my work," says Lunzer, who has dyslexia. "And growing up dyslexic, no one told me to set my sights high." Now as an artist and also the owner of a successful small business, Josefine's Salon Concepts, Lunzer has incorporated her experiences to create Fitting Together Ar t. The concept is to design an art project in which children, regardless...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
Fund approves $4.7 million for behavioral health programs (Michigan)
By Jay Greene (Crain's Detroit Business) The Michigan Health Endowment Fund has approved 11 grants totaling $4.7 million for behavioral health programs. Some 60 organizations submitted proposals for funding that would "improve access to high quality, person-centered, and integrated mental health and substance use disorder services for Michigan children and seniors," according to the endowments' request for proposal. Grant proposals for the endowment's healthy aging project are due Aug. 15.
Blog Post
Gathering in Topeka, Kansas for the Educators’ Art of Facilitation.
I know that I’m not alone in feeling that the work we do is both difficult and yet incredibly fulfilling. It is work that often requires us to navigate across ideological and political lines, across racial and religious lines, through broken systems and a great deal of suffering. It is work that can’t be done alone. Recently a group of education leaders and nationally recognized trauma experts came together in Topeka Kansas exploring a common shared understanding, “that for educators to...
Blog Post
Gov. Kate Brown is doing plenty to boost graduation rates [OregonLive.com]
...in a matter of days, House Bill 4002, will be signed into law here in Oregon. The bill resulted from 18 months of conferences, study and research with over 500 participants. National experts from the University of Chicago and Washington State University provided important input to the process. This bill represents action-oriented legislation on absenteeism — community-driven, evidence-based and forward thinking. ...HB4002 sets an action-based approach in motion. It asks school districts...
Blog Post
How to Build a Trauma-Sensitive Classroom Where All Learners Feel Safe (kqed.org)
Patricia Jennings, associate professor at the University of Virginia and author of the new book The Trauma-Sensitive Classroom , says that childhood trauma can have severe immediate and long-term consequences for students’ cognitive, social and emotional development. There is some hopeful news in the sobering research about kids and trauma. “We know enough about the science to know that teachers can make a huge difference,” said Jennings. “The school environment is one of the places where...
Blog Post
Guide - Creating Trauma-Informed Policies: A Practice Guide for School and Mental Health Leadership
Author, Leora Wolf-Prusan, EdD, School Mental Health lead for SAMHSA's Mental Health Technology Center Pacific Southwest http://mhttcnetwork.org/mhttc/mhttc-psw.html Creating compassionate policies is a cornerstone strategy of educational leadership. This guide provides a deep dive into developing, implementing, and evaluating trauma-informed and compassionate school policies. It highlights four "choice points" for education and mental health leadership: Choice Point 1: Names &...
Blog Post
How California’s Rural Education Network Is Creating an Online Hub to Better Connect Remote Schools and Empower Teachers to Share Experiences, Strategies & Classroom Materials (the74million.org)
Educators in rural communities face unique challenges, but they also have special strengths that aren’t always found in urban and suburban schools. In California,where 60 percent of districts are in towns or rural areas, a new project is leveraging those strengths to help educators connect with one another and get the support they need. The California Rural Ed Network started in 2017 but recently launched an online resource bank that offers free informational and professional development...
Blog Post
How Do American Kids Become Murderers?
https://www.local10.com/news/m...ns_20151127193144631 Has murder become the norm in our society? Every day, you turn on the news to see who else got killed. I had to disconnect my cable TV because I just got so sick and tired of watching homicide news every day and see no change in our country's policies. No kid is born to become a murderer. Yet, our society somehow does a great job turning them into monsters. How? Liberty and freedom for all! Oh, really? Then why is the U.S. incarceration...
Blog Post
How do these pediatricians do ACEs screening? Early adopters tell all.
Last week, three pediatricians — with a combined experience of 15 years integrating ACEs science into their practices — reflected on the urgency they felt several years ago that prompted them to begin screening patients for childhood adversity and resilience when there was practically no guidance at all. Along their journey , they accumulated a list of lessons learned for other pediatricians and family clinics to use. The three pediatricians participated in the ACEs Connection webinar,...
Blog Post
How One Philadelphia After-school Program Works to Be Trauma-informed [youthtoday.org]
On an afternoon in October, kids in the Sunrise of Philadelphia after-school program made tissue-paper marigolds, assembled little altars and created masks. It was the Day of the Dead celebration held by Sunrise partner, Fleisher Art Memorial . They wrote poems about people who were no longer with them, either lost to death or simply separated across distance — a possibility in this largely immigrant and refugee community. The activity gave them a chance to explore loss and sadness, which —...
Blog Post
How These Teenagers Changed the Course of a Life (3-minutes uplift.tv)
What would you do if someone you cared about was being forced to give up their dreams? Learn how these girls, at just 14-years-old, saved their friend from a child marriage. Rumi and her friends are among 20, 000 people across Bangladesh trained in the Hunger Project’s Safe School For Girls program. The program equips girls with the tools & courage to stop child marriage & stand up for their rights. Stand with Rumi. Invest in women and girls. A film by The Hunger Project To view the...
Blog Post
How to Create an Anti-Bullying Support Group [PsychoTherapyNetwork.org]
The first anti-bullying project took place more than 30 years ago in Scandinavia. Since then, projects have cropped up around the world, mostly taking a similar overall approach: raising awareness of bullying and getting students to engage in activities that highlight its negative effects. By 2004, enough anti-bullying projects had been introduced in enough places to review their overall impact, including some meta-analyses of their results. Unfortunately, the evidence about their success...
Blog Post
How to Design a School That Prioritizes Kindness and Caring (kqed.org)
Countless schools across the nation strive to make character a feature of education. Whether through classes on social-emotional learning , mindfulness exercises or reminders about the virtues of gratitude, thousands of students are exposed to messages that deplore cheating and bullying and celebrate kindness and consideration. In spite of the lecturing, however, 51 percent of high school kids owned up to cheating on exams, according to the Josephson Institute. Another 62 percent believe...
Blog Post
How to Teach Teens About Love, Consent and Emotional Intelligence (ww2.kqed.org)
Navigating love and relationships can be difficult at any age, but especially so in the angsty teenage years. Budding romances can be fun and exhilarating but also confusing and uncomfortable. In these moments of confusion, teens often turn to friends or the internet for advice. But what if teens were trained with other options? What if lessons in love and romance were taught more explicitly in schools and at home? It turns out that teens are yearning for these lessons. They’re looking for...
Blog Post
How Trauma Creates Gaps in Academic Achievement [hogg.utexas.edu]
By Josephine Gurch, Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, June 20, 2019. Every year, the Hogg Foundation gives the Frances Fowler Wallace Memorial Award for Mental Health Dissertation Research to eligible doctoral candidates at institutions of higher education in Texas. Awardees receive a $1,500 scholarship to help cover research-related expenses. Angela M. Powell is a 2018 recipient. While pursuing a degree in Counselor Education at Sam Houston State University, Powell formulated a study that...
Blog Post
Illinois Governor Signs Law to Include Social-Emotional Screening in School Health Exams
Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner and Diana Rauner, President of Ounce of Prevention Fund _____________________________________________ Consistent with being the first state to adopt standards for social emotional learning (SEL) in the country, Illinois recently passed legislation (SB 565, Public Act 99-0927 ) to require social and emotional screenings for children as part of the their school entry examinations. Governor Rauner (R) signed the bill on January 20. It goes into effect June 1 of...