Tagged With "California's First Surgeon General"
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1 Neighborhood. 24 Kindergarten Classes. 40 Languages. (Some Miming Helps.) [www.nytimes.com]
To read more of Catherine Porter 's article, please click here .
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10 Ways Parents and Schools Can Prevent School Shootings Now (Op-Ed) (livescience.com)
As a parent, I understand the desire for practical responses to school shootings. I also absolutely believe the government should do more to prevent such incidents. But the gun control debate has proven so divisive and ineffective that I am weary of waiting for politicians to act. I study the kind of aggressive childhood behavior that often predates school shootings. That research suggests what communities and families can start doing today to better protect children. Here are 10 actions we...
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1st Annual Trauma-Responsive Schools Conference
HERE this NOW is thrilled to announce its first annual Trauma-Responsive Schools Conference. The event will take place May 9th-May 11th at The Woodbound Inn in Rindge, NH. The event locale was selected for its central location in New England (2-hours from Boston, 3-hours from Portland, 4-hours from Albany). This conference experience will be unlike other conference formats. Registration is limited to 40 participants to maximize psychological safety, depth of learning, and individualized...
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2nd Annual Trauma Responsive Schools Conference - Virtual
Pre-pandemic, educators said we were facing challenges not experienced by older generations. This pandemic makes that notion truer than ever. This pandemic is a rapidly emerging collective stress that is reshaping the structure and fabric of experience in most every facet of life, but especially in education. It pushes us to adapt creatively and to think outside our typical “box.” And yet, in every crisis opportunity lurks. Three nationally recognized trauma-informed consultants have...
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9 Ways Schools Will Look Different When (And If) They Reopen [texaspublicradio.org]
By ANYA KAMENETZ , April 24th ,2020 Three-quarters of U.S. states have now officially closed their schools for the rest of the academic year. While remote learning continues, summer is a question mark, and attention is already starting to turn to next fall. Recently, governors including California's Gavin Newsom and New York's Andrew Cuomo have started to talk about what school reopening might look like. And a federal government plan for reopening, according to The Washington Post, says that...
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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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A Better Normal- Education Upended, continued
Thursday, May 21, 2020 Education Upended, continued. New time this week only, 10-11am PST Please join us for the ongoing community discussion of "A Better Normal — Education Upended". We bring bring our focus back to the future. Using our breakout session format, we will identify the strategies and lessons learned that we want to bring into the future of school, and ways in which we might do that. How do we create physical and psychological safety, especially in the face of so much...
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A Conversation with Nadine Burke Harris: How Should Pediatricians Address Childhood Adversity?
Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris is a masterful storyteller. I learned in a conversation with her at Wheelock College before her presentation for the Brookline, MA organization Steps to Success , that before she decided to become doctor, Dr. Burke Harris wanted to be an author. Only after the smashing success of her TED talk: How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime , when she was approached by a literary agent, did she find her way to writing. Her newly released book The...
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A Landmark Lawsuit Aimed to Fix Special Ed for California's Black Students. It Didn't. [kqed.org]
By Lee Romney, KQED, October 18, 2019 Darryl Lester was at his mom’s place in Tacoma, Washington, when a letter he’d been waiting for arrived in the mail. At 40, he was destitute, in pain and out of work. The letter delivered good news: Lester would be getting disability benefits after blowing out his back in a sheet metal accident. But he crumpled it up and threw it in the trash. Why? Because he couldn’t read it. From first through seventh grades, Lester had attended three public schools in...
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Middle school tackles everybody's trauma; result is calmer, happier kids, teachers and big drop in suspensions
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]...
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A Mindset Shift to Continue Supporting the Most Frustrating Kids (ww2.kqed.org)
Challenging students aren’t that way because they are inherently bad kids or intentionally creating difficulties in the classroom. To borrow a phrase from Ross Greene, “kids do well if they can,” and if they aren’t doing well, it’s because there’s something getting in the way. When I step back and consider the obstacles in my students’ lives — poverty, trauma, chronic stress — it makes total sense that they are struggling to communicate, regulate their emotions and make progress on learning.
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A Public School That Not Only Keeps Children Safe, But Heals [nonprofitquarterly.org]
After the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida earlier this year, schools are at the epicenter of national debates on gun violence and mental health. How can teachers and administrators deal with troubled students? And how can they make schools safer for all? It’s not the first time that schools have been asked to address social problems that originate far outside their hallways. In a nation where more than 40 percent of kids are from low-income families, school teachers and...
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A school sought 50 men to stand in for absent fathers at ‘Breakfast with Dads’ — nearly 600 showed up [washingtonpost.com]
Something somewhat extraordinary happened last month at Billy Earl Dade Middle School in Dallas. The school — with a student population of nearly 900, about 90 percent from low-income families — planned to host its first “Breakfast with Dads,” according to the Dallas Morning News . About 150 male students, ages 11 to 13, signed up. But event organizers were concerned that some would attend without a male figure at their side, so they put out a call for volunteers who could serve as mentors.
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A School That Provides The One Constant In Homeless Children's Lives (npr.org)
Positive Tomorrows is a small, privately funded school in the heart of Oklahoma City, designed to meet the needs of homeless children. The future of these students hinges on the one constant in their lives: the school, which addresses both education and basic needs. The educational challenges associated with homelessness are broad and extend to every corner of a child's life. Without consistent access to adequate food, shelter and safety, students are often too hungry, tired and stressed to...
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A "When the Nickel Dropped" Story - Sometimes It's Something So Small
My daughter, Candace, taught 5th then 3rd grade at an inner city Baltimore elementary school through Teach For America. It was trial by fire her first year, as this was a struggling school and many students had a trauma history. It is Teach For America’s mission to place teachers in the most needy schools. Candace was very enthusiastic, but didn’t know much about trauma and its effects, other than what she intuitively felt - which was impressively a lot. So it was very timely that I was...
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ACE-Aha Moments & Parenting: Meet Aprel Phelps Downey
Aprel Phelps Downey What was your ACEs Aha moment? When did you first hear about ACEs and what impact did/does it have on you? How do ACEs impact you as a parent? How is your parenting impacted by past trauma? What’s been most helpful to you as a parent parenting with ACEs? What’s been most challenging for you as a parent parenting with ACEs? What has parenting taught you? What have you learned? How do you manage complex family relationships? What inspires/encourages and helps you? I know...
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ACE Surveillance Study of Teachers and Administrators in Public and Private Schools in Southwest Nigeria, West Africa
Note: These findings were presented at the Child Trauma Conference in Lagos on October 25-26, 2019. Rationale: Many children today live with layers of stress both subtle and overt which in this report are collectively referred to as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Specifically, these ACEs are physical, emotional and sexual abuse; physical and emotional neglect; household dysfunction and domestic violence as well as community violence. The children have a life marked by chaos,...
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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...
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ACEs Champion Julie Kurtz Gives Every Child (and Adult) a Voice
Julie Kurtz hasn’t stopped creating ways to build and promote resilience in herself and others who have experienced trauma since she left her family home for college at age 18. Although she experienced four types of adversity during her childhood, the CEO of the Center for Optimal Brain Integration has traveled a complex journey to mitigate those adversities by recognizing her own internal resilience, building skills to buffer her toxic and traumatic stress, uncovering her voice through...
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ACEs Group Shows its Hand to School Board [parkrapidsenterprise.com]
By Robin D. Fish, Park Rapids Enterprise, August 10, 2019 The Park Rapids Area School Board on Monday heard a presentation by the community’s ACEs Committee about the school’s central role in the drive to make Park Rapids a trauma-informed community. Speaking for ACES MN, a local group started under the auspices of ACTION Park Rapids to address adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), five presenters reviewed the area’s first ACEs Summit, held Feb. 13 at the high school. Lisa Coborn,...
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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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ACEs Science in Education: The Next Big Challenge is Systems Change #ACEsCon2018
One of the first sessions of the 2018 ACEs Conference: Action to Access discussed the barriers and opportunities for increasing access in the field of education. The main question was: "How can one achieve systematic changes within the field of education?" The session was moderated by Michelle Flowers, a passionate advocate, and the principal of Kinney High in Rancho Cordova, CA, which is part of the Folsom Cordova Unified School District. It included a dynamic and diverse panel of education...
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ACEs/toxic stress color wheel for schools!
If you've seen the documentary Paper Tigers , you may remember the stress target -- or color wheel -- in Lincoln High School Principal Jim Sporleder's office. Now you can have one, too! The steering group members of the Yolo Resilience Network in Yolo County, CA, (you can find them on the Yolo County ACEs Connection group) realized the needed to have some tools that they could give to local educators for whom they did presentations about ACEs and trauma-informed practices. "We'd see people...
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ACEs Validated My Teaching Experience
When I first heard about the CDC-Kaiser Permanente ACE Study , it felt like a light bulb had actually gone on. Finally, FINALLY, someone was validating what I saw every single day teaching in East Oakland. For eight years, I taught at an elementary school in the most violent part of Oakland , the part that the police called the “Killing Zone.” The kids in my class had seen friends, neighbors, and family members shot or stabbed, and routinely hid in bathrooms and closets when gang fights...
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ACLU: COPS AND NO COUNSELORS- How the Lack of School Mental Health Staff Is Harming Students
In the wake of high-profile school shootings, many schools over the past decade have invested scarce educational funds into putting more police in schools. School districts have shown a near obsession with “hardening” schools despite federal data revealing that the real crisis of schools isn’t violence, but a broad failure to hire enough support staff to serve students’ mental health needs. Today’s students are experiencing record levels of depression and anxiety and many forms of trauma.
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Addressing Adverse Childhood Experiences in School (ascd.org)
Of the roughly 74 million children in the United States, just under 51 million are preK–12 public school students. Every day, 13 million of these children go hungry. A report of child abuse is made every ten seconds . And 2.7 million have a parent in prison. Our children are living in a state of emergency. How can we, as educators, expect them to learn when they are living in a constant state of fight or flight? Even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente...
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Addressing childhood trauma in Laconia schools [laconiadailysun.com]
Over the last few years, the Laconia School District has been actively working to understand what childhood trauma is, how it impacts our students, and what we, as an educational institution can do to mitigate the effects of this. We have also learned about secondary, or vicarious, trauma. This type of trauma is experienced by our staff as a result of supporting our students who are living with ongoing and pervasive trauma. Our teachers and support staff are serving in pseudo social worker...
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Advice for New Principals: Be 'Emotionally Vulnerable With Your Staff' (edweek.org)
In our second installment of advice for new principals, Education Week talked to Melissa Hensley, who just finished her seventh year as principal of Central High School in Woodstock, Va. Hensley was the Virginia state principal of the year in 2016 and a finalist for the 2017 National Principal of the Year, an award given by the National Association of Secondary School Principals. EW: What words of wisdom do you have for a first-year principal? HENSLEY : One thing that really comes to...
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An Epic Battle for Public Education: A Front Line View
As one single example of one key complexity (there are many others), children in our Public School classrooms have massive rates of trauma, described by a U.S. Department of Justice report as an “epidemic” and by past Surgeon Generals as “national crisis.”
The Center for Disease Control(CDC) says it is critical to understan
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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...
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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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Analysis: What Two New Studies Reveal About Restorative Justice in Middle School — and How It Can Be Done Better (the74million.org)
Two RAND Corp. studies recently evaluated the use of restorative practices to strengthen relationships between students and teachers to build that connection to school. These include teachers and other adult staff soliciting thoughts and ideas from students when making decisions, such as developing classroom norms; expressing their feelings in response to students’ behavior; encouraging students to express and respect their and others’ feelings; addressing not just bad behavior but also the...
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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...
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Announcing the Parenting with ACEs Monthly Chat Series!
I'm thrilled to announce our NEW Live Chat series!!! Starting in May, once a month, we will have a live Chat Event. It will take online in the Parenting with ACEs Group the second Tuesday of the month at 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST). We'll learn from our featured guests (below) about ACE-related issues. We'll have discussions and share experiences, stories, and resources with each other. Here is who and what we have scheduled for 2017. 2017 Monthly Chat Schedule / Time is Always: @ 10 AM PST (1...
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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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Arne Duncan: ‘Everyone Says They Value Education, but Their Actions Don’t Follow’ [theatlantic.com]
Arne Duncan, the former education secretary under President Barack Obama, has always been more candid than others who’ve served in that role. He’s often used his platform to talk about what he sees as the persistent socioeconomic and racial disparities in access to quality schools. His new book, How Schools Work: An Inside Account of Failure and Success From One of the Nation’s Longest-Serving Secretaries of Education, further cements that reputation. How Schools Work’s first chapter is...
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As '13 Reasons Why' Returns, Schools Try To Help Students Who Are Thinking Of Suicide [npr.org]
School officials have issued warnings to parents ahead of the second season of the Netflix drama "13 Reasons Why," which premieres this week. The first season, which centered on the suicide of a high school student, triggered cautions from the National Association of School Psychologists. Netflix has responded to concerns by adding PSA-style messages filmed by the cast and putting up a web site with links to resources. The national attention comes at a time when, new research suggests, one...
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As California Expands Ban on ‘Willful Defiance’ Suspensions, Lessons From L.A. Schools, Which Barred Them Six Years Ago
September 18, 2019 by TAYLOR SWAAK A s California this month expanded a statewide ban on suspending younger students for defiant behavior, lessons on how this increasingly sweeping school discipline reform may play out can be found in Los Angeles, which barred such suspensions on an even broader scale six years ago. Previously in California, “willful defiance” suspensions were not permitted in grades K-3. Beginning in July 2020, under the new state law , they will be prohibited for students...
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As Its Homeless Student Population Surges, Perkins K-8 Is Learning to Adapt [voiceofsandiego.org]
At one point last school year, homeless students made up a third of the Barrio Logan school’s total enrollment. Fernando Hernandez, the principal at Perkins K-8, makes sure his middle school teachers don’t put too much weight on homework. Hernandez caps the percentage of grades drawn from homework at 15 percent, which he says is lower than many middle schools. Though many schools and parents across the country have argued in recent years that schools should de-emphasize homework, Hernandez...
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ATN Announces 40 Workshops for National Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools Conference
The Attachment & Trauma Network announces the full agenda of the first National Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools Conference, February 18-20, 2018 at the Washington Hilton in Washington DC. The conference will feature keynotes by Dr. Susan Craig & Melissa Sadin, Robert Hull, and Dr. Mona Johnson. A Building Trauma-Informed Community luncheon will be held on Tuesday. And Jim Sporleder will be our special guest at a screening of Paper Tigers on Sunday night. "We had an overwhelming...
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ATN's First Trauma-Sensitive Schools Training a Success
June 2016. ATN’s Trauma-Sensitive Schools (TSS) Initiative hosted our first Professional Development Training June 27 & 28 in Somerville, NJ. The Superintendent of Somerville Schools, Dr. Tim Purnell was the keynote and spoke on the importance of viewing things through a different lens. Then ATN’s TSS trainers Melissa Sadin and Jen Alexander provided a full day of training to enable educators to realize the impact of early childhood trauma; recognize traumatized children in their...
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Oregon Governor Kate Brown signs landmark trauma-informed education bill into law
A landmark trauma-informed education bill to address “chronic absences of students” in the state’s public schools was signed by Governor Kate Brown last week. The bill, H.B. 4002 , requires two state education agencies to develop a statewide plan to address the problem and provides funding for “trauma-informed” approaches in schools. While bill’s $500,000 in funding falls vastly short of the original $5.75 million requested for five pilot sites in an earlier version (H.B. 4031), it provides...
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Osborn School District Board Writes Resolution Supporting Trauma Informed Practices
“It’s my hope that the resolution garners attention, partnerships and funding so that our students can get the best education in Osborn. 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.
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Osborn School District Board Writes Resolution Supporting Trauma Informed Practices
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.
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Osborn School District Board Writes Resolution Supporting Trauma Informed Practices
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.
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Our opinion: District and city must unite to ward off trauma’s effects [thenotebook.org]
This is the third print edition that the Notebook has dedicated to discussing trauma and its impact on children, their learning, their schools, and their teachers. It comes as the Notebook is in the second year of funding for beat reporting dedicated to stories about education and behavioral health, thanks to the van Ameringen Foundation. At this point, we have written dozens of stories, interviewed at least 100 people, and even produced a video and article series on a school that has...
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Pacific Southwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center Summer 2019 Learning Institute!
The Pacific Southwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center is incredibly excited to announce that registration is open for our Pacific Southwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center Summer 2019 Learning Institute ! What: Two days of incredibly high quality faculty (e.g. David Shonfeld from the National School Crisis & Bereavement Center! Yolo Akili Robinson from the Black Emotional & Mental Health Collective!) offering intensive learning sessions to support the mental health...
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Paper Tigers draws a huge crown in Montana!
On Monday night, January 25th, a collaborative group of child-serving organizations in Helena, Montana hosted a public screening of Paper Tiger's. Not really knowing what the response might be, we anticipated a fair attendance. Using our various databases of connections, and setting up a Facebook page, we were happily surprised that we filled the 1,000-seat auditorium almost to capacity! We've calculated that perhaps almost 800 people showed up and were incredibly inspired by the film!
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Paper Tigers Educational Purchase - available for pre-order NOW
The Educational Purchase License of 'Paper Tigers' will be available to ship starting on March 15th, 2016 for K-12, University, and Public Library institutions. This license will allow your institution to keep Paper Tigers and host multiple screenings of it in the future. CLICK HERE to learn more. --If you'd like to host your screening in the first two week of March, please contact us at edu@tugginc.com and we'll discuss how to ensure it arrives on time. --The Educational Purchase...
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Parent Handouts: Understanding ACEs, Parenting to Prevent & Heal ACEs (English)
Please see the main post for these parent handouts in the ACEs Connection Resources Center. These two flyers ( Understanding ACEs and Parenting to Prevent & Heal ACEs ) can be downloaded, distributed, and used freely. One is brand new and the other is a revision. Both flyers were made with generous support from Family Hui, a Program of Lead for Tomorrow. Translations of these flyers are in progress and will be shared by Family Hui and updated on ACEs Connection when available.