Tagged With "Laura Martin"
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ACEs Science Champions Series: Eulanda Thorne Applies ACEs Science Awareness at School and at Home
Eulanda Thorne and her children (L to R) Sarah, Joshua, Leah, Emmanuel When school counselor Eulanda Thorne discovered the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in 2018, she felt as if she were on fire. “I felt that I had missed a vital part of my education. Anyone who is in college for social work or teaching, a class on ACEs and trauma should be a required course.” Without an understanding of ACEs, she says, “I would think the students who are sent to me are being defiant or...
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FOCUS Program helps kids exposed to trauma [Turlock (California) Journal]
Handle with care.” Those three small words can have a huge impact on students throughout Turlock Unified School District who may have been exposed to violence or trauma, thanks to a program that has quietly worked to help lessen the effects of traumatic experiences on children throughout Stanislaus County, CA over the past year and a half. On Tuesday evening, the Board of Trustees received an update on the Focusing On Children Under Stress, or FOCUS, Program, implemented throughout the...
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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...
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How Making Time for Mindfulness Helps Students (kqed.org)
A new study suggests that mindfulness education — lessons on techniques to calm the mind and body — can reduce the negative effects of stress and increase students’ ability to stay engaged, helping them stay on track academically and avoid behavior problems. After finding that students who self-reported mindful habits performed better on tests and had higher grades, researchers with the Boston Charter Research Collaborative — a partnership between the Center for Education Policy Research at...
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How Mass Incarceration Pushes Black Children Further Behind in School [TheAtlantic.com]
In the summer of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the closing remarks at the March on Washington. More than 200,000 people gathered to cast a national spotlight on and mobilize resistance to Jim Crow, racist laws and policies that disenfranchised black Americans and mandated segregated housing, schools, and employment. Today, more than 50 years later, remnants of Jim Crow segregation persist in the form of mass incarceration —the imprisonment of millions of Americans, overwhelmingly...
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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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Hurtful Words: Association of Exposure to Peer Verbal Abuse With Elevated Psychiatric Symptom Scores and Corpus Callosum Abnormalities Martin H. Teicher, MD et. al.
Objective: Previous studies have shown that exposure to parental verbal abuse in childhood is associated with higher rates of adult psychopathology and alterations in brain structure. In this study the authors sought to examine the symptomatic and...
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School Walkout: An Adult Ally Guide (youthempowerment.com)
Amplify their voice, not yours. Broadcast your willingness to be a "helper". Assume competence in youth leadership. Don't assume anything else. The moment news spread that the students of Parkland, Florida were using their voices to speak out against school violence, Rep. Shawn Harrison staffer claimed that the students were paid actors. This reaction isn’t uncommon. Some adults in positions of power are hesitant to include youth voice in the public sphere, and some will use any means...
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Letter of the Week: Healing from adverse childhood experiences [www.kansascity.com]
Kansas City Star, Letter to the Editor Keith Martin Overcoming abuse As a pediatric resident physician, I treat kids whose problems extend beyond the diseases I learned about in medical school. Often, helping children and families requires looking into root causes hidden outside of doctors’ offices. One such problem is toxic stress endured by children who have had adverse childhood experiences such as child abuse, neglect or family dysfunction. In the late 1990s, a landmark study of 17,000...
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Massachusetts implements the 2014 Safe and Supportive Schools Framework law
A little over two years ago, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed into law “The Safe and Supportive Schools Framework.” This statute creates the conditions for schools to become safe and supportive by establishing a statewide framework that incorporates trauma sensitiv ity . The law , signed August 13, 2014, also established the Safe and Supportive Schools Commission to provide the legislature and the state with recommendations on how best to ensure that all schools have the time and...
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Sausalito-Marin City district agrees to desegregate school [Marin IJ]
By Keri Brenner, August 9, 2019 for the Marin I. J. State Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Friday announced a historic settlement with the Sausalito Marin City School District that will lead to desegregation within five years. The announcement comes almost nine months after the AG’s office accused the district of deliberately creating a segregated school at Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. Academy in Marin City and violating state anti-discrimination laws. Becerra said the district’s former...
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Trauma Informed Care -- Workforce training framework
A colleague of mine -- here in New Zealand!! -- recently passed the attached PDF, from Scotland, onto me. It concerns a relatively recent, and still developing, proposed trauma training framework. This might be helpful to others wishing to go further in introducing TIC in their own services. It includes a consideration of ACEs. Naturally, it needs to incorporate culture-specific additions or modifications to suit your local conditions. The document as it is likely has broad application.
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Trauma Informed Schools Webinar Archive
Did you see the September 22 webinar the National Child Traumatic Stress Network hosted? If you missed it look for it here: http://learn.nctsn.org/ The handouts are also attached. Policy Issues in Implementing Trauma-Informed Schools In this webinar experts will explore policy challenges and lessons learned in promoting and supporting trauma-informed schools. Speakers will share key NCTSN resources related to the development and implementation of trauma-informed schools; discuss the...
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What it’s Like to Teach at One of America’s Least Racially Integrated Schools [theatlantic.com]
On a late February afternoon, Angela Crawford, an English teacher, stood in front of about three dozen Philadelphia educators—mostly young, black women—as they all swapped stories of small victories and challenges in their classrooms. Dressed in a “Black Lives Matter” T-shirt and slim black slacks, Crawford, at one point, reflected on what has helped her remain resilient while working in some of the nation’s least resourced and most segregated classrooms for 23 years. “Black women are...
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Women's Fund grant recipients to build amygdala rooms [www.washtimesherald.com]
Thanks to a grant from the Daviess County Community Foundation’s Women’s Fund, two area school corporations will be able to offer additional services to help improve the lives of students both in and out of the classroom. Daviess-Martin Special Education Co-op School Academic and Behavior Coach Missy Brothers and Kelly Miller, Washington Community Schools social worker, made the pitch for their project “Addressing the Emotional, Social and Academic Health of our Youth” last week at the...
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Denver School Principal On How Black Students Led Swift Changes To History Curriculum [npr.org]
By Ailsa Chang and Jonaki Mehta, National Public Radio, July 10, 2020 Across the country, students of color have been demanding change from their schools. At one Denver school, the push for a more inclusive and diverse curriculum came last year, from a group of African American high school students at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Early College. Black students at the joint middle school and high school say they didn't see their history and culture reflected in the curriculum at a school that's...
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Why every teacher needs to know about childhood trauma (The Conversation)
By Emily Berger , Monash University , Karen Martin , University of Western Australia, September 11, 2020. Mental health issues among children are on the rise due to the impacts of the COVID pandemic, including lockdowns. Recent reports show there has been a 28% spike in calls to the phone counselling service Kids Helpline between March and July 2020 compared with the same period last year in Victoria, which is under stage 3 and 4 restrictions. This prompted the state government to fast-track...
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Speakers at children & youth conference call for systems change based in love, liberation
California can support children and youth by tackling the state’s — and the country’s — legacy of White supremacy and replacing it with a trauma-informed approach of love, empathy, and support.
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Students lead US push for fuller Black history education [amp.miamiherald.com]
By Mike Catalni, Miami Herald, April 8,, 2021 Ebele Azikiwe was in the sixth grade last year when February came and it was time to learn about Black history again. She was, by then, familiar with the curriculum: Rosa Parks, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and a discussion on slavery. Just like the year before, she said, and the year before that. Then came George Floyd's death in May, and she wrote to the administration at her school in Cherry Hill, in New Jersey's Philadelphia suburbs, to...
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Kaci Martin
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Nicole Baronich
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JoAnna Martin
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Building a Restorative Restart to School in the Fall
As we look towards the reopening of in-person instruction in the fall, planning and reimagining for a restorative restart to our school systems that emphasizes student and educator mental health is a priority. In addition, there is a windfall of one-time funding coming to districts from federal and local funds for just this purpose. Recently a wise educator said to me, ‘you know, if you want to get to the hearts and minds of school leaders to make changes for the fall you need to do so by...
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Jacqueline Allen
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3 case studies utilizing trauma-informed technology for school resilience
3 case studies utilizing adaptive tech to improve school resilience, featuring Dr. Martin Eaton (CA Schools), Ruth Schoonover (SC Schools), and Colin Bauer (SC Schools)
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PACEs Research Corner — May 2023, Part 2
[Editor's note: Dr. Harise Stein at Stanford University edits a web site — abuseresearch.info — that focuses on the effects of abuse, and includes research articles on PACEs. Every month, she posts the summaries of the abstracts and links to research articles that address only ACEs, PCEs and PACEs. Thank you, Harise!! — Rafael Maravilla] Domestic Violence – Effects on Children Makris G, Eleftheriades A, Pervanidou P. Early Life Stress, Hormones, and Neurodevelopmental Disorders. Horm Res...
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