Tagged With "West Contra Costa"

6 th grader Cayla White (right) helps lead class meditation with Niroga Institute’s Lauren Banister/ photos by Laurie Udesky During the 2014/2015 school year, things were looking grim at Park Middle School in Antioch, CA. At the time, staff couldn’t corral student disruptions. Teacher morale was plummeting. By the end of February 2015, 192 kids of the 997 students had been suspended -- 19.2 percent of the student population. “I was watching really good people burning out from the [teaching]...

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...

“We were in special measures. We had low staff morale, parents not happy with the school, results were poor and nobody wanted to come here, we had budget issues. It’s a downward spiral when you’re there.” This is what Feversham headteacher, Naveed Idrees, told The Guardian . He continued: “We could have gone down the route where we said we need to get results up, we’re going to do more English, more maths, more booster classes, but we didn’t. You might hit the results but your staff morale...

Joel Heller Thursday, May 7, 2020 Education Upended, continued. Please join us for the ongoing discussion of "A Better Normal — Education Upended". We are going to bring our focus back to the future. Using our breakout session format, we will identify the strategies and lessons learned from the past three weeks on regulation, relationships, and family connections that we want to bring into the future of school and ways in which we might do that. Our current capacity is 100 participants, so...

Neuroscientist Richard Davidson is one of the central people who’s helped us begin to see inside our brains. His work has illuminated the rich interplay between things we saw as separate not that long ago: body, mind, spirit, emotion, behavior, and genetics. Richard is applying what he’s learning about imparting qualities of character — like kindness and practical love — in lives and in classrooms. This live conversation was recorded at the Orange County Department of Education in Costa...

As a result of California’s new school accountability system , West Contra Costa Unified, a San Francisco Bay Area school district that includes Richmond and several surrounding communities, is facing considerable pressure to increase the number of special education students who meet math and English language arts standards on tests and who go on to graduate. The district is among more than 150 districts — nearly 18 percent of all districts in California — slated to get help from county...

By Ali Tadayon and Ashley A. Smith, EdSource, June 5, 2020 The shock and anger that is rippling throughout the country over the police killing of George Floyd hits home for West Contra Costa Unified — a majority Latino and African American district in the San Francisco Bay Area. As the district ends instruction this week, teachers described their efforts to give students the opportunity to talk — even if it is just virtually — about their concerns. Superintendent Matthew Duffy, in a message...

By Theresa Harrington, EdSource, October 16, 2020 Deep into the pandemic, some districts are finding an alarming percentage of students are missing from the virtual classroom — with the worst absentee rates occurring among homeless students, foster youth, English learners, Black students and high school seniors. Now some districts, such as West Contra Costa and Oakland Unified in the San Francisco Bay Area, are scrambling to find ways to track down and re-engage students and provide them...

By Ali Tadayon and Sydney Johnson, EdSource, January 4, 2021 C alifornia school districts and cities that are grappling with unequal internet access among their students during the pandemic are taking it upon themselves to solve the problem. Early on, schools often gave individual hotspots to students who don’t have the means to access the internet at home. But service can be patchy and expensive. So, some communities — San Jose, West Contra Costa County, Kings County and Oakland among...

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.

A webinar offered by the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP) Thursday, September 30, 1:30 - 3:00 pm EDT Register today . Addressing the mental health needs of child care providers and children in care is vital in the face of the pandemic, a population-level traumatic event. CTIPP is offering a "plug and play" framework to ease the process of developing a continuum of training, reflective coaching, and consultation to build the capacity for supporting relational health...

PACEs Connection and the Essentials for Childhood (EfC) Initiative, a project of the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) and the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) have developed two new resources, “Community Strategies to Address California’s Digital Divide and Its Impact on Children and Families” Report and the “Digital Divide Brief: Community Strategies to Address California’s Digital Divide and Its Impact on Children and Families”

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 own Lara Kain will be speaking during this webinar focused on trauma informed strategies in schools. Join 4CA and the following panel of leaders in this discussion about policy perspectives on implementing trauma informed strategies in schools, including an update on California’s 4.1 billion dollar investment in Community Schools. Janis Connallon, Senior Health Policy Associate, Children’s Defense Fund-CA Elena Costa, Program Coordinator, Essentials for Childhood...