Tagged With "Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog"

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.

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

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...

Students stressed out over impending college acceptance and rejection letters drop by a teacher’s class to spend time brushing the therapy dog in her class just to calm their nerves. At another campus, a first grader practices reading aloud while absentmindedly playing with the ears of a therapy dog that visits his class once a week. Man’s best friend is playing an increasingly important role in maintaining student mental health as more becomes required of students to succeed academically.

The West Virginia Defending Childhood Initiative, commonly referred to as Handle With Care, is tailored to reflect the needs and issues affecting children in West Virginia. The Initiative, a result of a collaborative effort of key stakeholders and partners, builds upon the success of proven programs throughout the country. The goal of the Initiative is to prevent children's exposure to trauma and violence, mitigate negative affects experienced by children's exposure to trauma, and to...

Officials in the Hopkins School District have been working to create accessible mental health resources for students. One of those initiatives is partnering with North Star Therapy Animals. Through that collaboration, the district brings therapy dogs to schools for students to interact with. “Right now, the dogs are in the building one day a week, so North (Junior High) it’s usually on Mondays, West (Junior High) it’s usually on Tuesdays, at the high school we have Fridays,” said Terese...

Eanes ISD in Austin, TX, where I am a behavior support teacher, is committed to preparing and inspiring all students for life-long success. We focus on the whole student, including social-emotional learning, collaboration, communication, problem-solving, stress-management and leadership, to name a few. Teaching these skills creates successful students and successful people. Research shows that when we experience stress, our brain’s ability to think logically goes “off line” because our...

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...

Leaders from across the Sunshine State will take part in a “Think Tank” in Naples, FL, on Monday, August 6, to help create a more trauma-informed Florida. The estimated 350 attendees will include policy makers and community teams made up of school superintendents, law enforcement officers, judges, hospital administrators, mayors, PTA presidents, child welfare experts, mental health and substance abuse treatment providers, philanthropists, university researchers, state agency heads, and...

      Each morning, Cali, an 18-month-old Rhodesian Ridgeback, patiently waits for the K-12 students to pass through the doors of the Calais School in Whippany, N.J. As they walk by, Cali sniffs each one. The students, about 85 in all,...

The past few years have brought a wealth of evidence for the impact of childhood trauma on lifelong health. The AAP has recognized the importance of childhood trauma with conferences (2015 Violence, Abuse and Toxic Stress: An Update on Trauma-informed Care in Children and Youth) and resources ( AAP Trauma Toolbox for Primary Care .) Like many pediatricians, I have been grateful for the attention to and evidence base for an area of pediatrics I see on a daily basis but for which I have felt...

By Guy Macpherson, The Trauma Therapist Project, March 2020 Dr. Bruce Perry is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and neuroscientist. He is senior fellow at the ChildTrauma Academy and an adjunct professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. In addition to having written more than two hundred scientific articles, Dr. Perry has coauthored with Maia Szalavitz two books for general audiences: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories...

Downward-facing dog; extended side angle pose; high lunge: they’re learning it all. Teachers Rachel Dunlap and Shannon Petersen plan to give these pupils—from their own homeroom class—a year-long lesson in the techniques of yoga. The yoga lessons begin each morning after announcements and have taken place since the beginning of the school year only three weeks ago, Dunlap said. The teachers have already seen improvements in the students’ yoga performance, as well as in their concentration...

Many blog readers know that my niece Carly is a survivor of the Parkland shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. You may know that my father also survived a mass murder, and like Carly, hid in a closet until the police arrived. Almost 70 years separated the two tragedies. Our guest blogger this week is my sister Merri, Carly's mom. Merri shares her first-hand account of what happened the afternoon of February 14, 2018, when Carly sent this text, “Mom don’t freak out but we are on...

Brilliant idea! A cortisol-sniffer dog.

As an Special Education Director I had a situation where a student with a very legitimate but non-traditional need required a service dog to be present in the school. It was ground breaking in a number of ways as this was a situation/condition that staff struggled to understand (ie, it was not due to loss of vision). The dog was a "therapy dog" and was prescribed as a result of a condition where anxiety triggered a number of symptoms for the child. Suffice it to say, external observations by...

John Richardson-Lauve, LCSW 200 N 22nd Street , Richmond, VA 23223 (804) 644.9590 jrl@childsavers.org | childsavers.org

ACE's, COVID-19 & Trauma-Aware Education - Changing Schools: 7 Big Shifts in Social Consciousness due to COVID-19 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 & hospitals, not police & jails (there should be HIPPA protections, not just FERPA)! Well? Onboard? If one grasps the prior, the following is self-evident: CORPORAL PUNISHMENT lays the foundation for abuse and...

This is a good article that identifies key reasons why educators need to be trauma-informed.

A school in San Diego uses a “facility dog” to offer children a kind of healing that humans sometimes cannot provide. It used to take Mary Skrabucha five minutes to walk across the campus of The O’Farrell Charter School in San Diego. Now it takes her twenty, because with Sejera — a golden retriever  — by her side, kids and teachers are constantly stopping to say hello. Sejera isn’t your average friendly retriever. She’s a trained “facility dog” who works with Skrabucha in Family Support...

Hello Ariane, I have some suggestions: Chapter 4 of The Connected Child (attached with permission) shows the disarming of fear to create felt safety in what I think is an approachable way that is easy to share with teachers. An Article of "Trauma Informed Classrooms" from Adoption Advocate (attached with permission) gives some practical framework to what is needed in a classroom setting TBRI® Animate: Toxic Stress & The Brain - is helpful as well. I provide resources for Southern...

Great article! I also have a Therapy Dog we trained ourselves, and he comes to school with me to my first grade classroom. He provides a tremendous amount of unconditional love my students with ACEs my not experience any place else. He is a vital part of our classroom, and the kids throughout the building LOVE him!

By Brittany R. Collins, Education Week, November 12, 2020 Over the past few decades, trauma-informed teaching has gained ground in the United States, yet rarely is grief included in the conversation. In the midst of a global pandemic, with teachers and students confronting loss in and outside the classroom in new and myriad ways, it is more critical than ever to apply a grief-sensitive lens to our conversations about curricula and trauma in the school system. We are not the people we were a...

The school district of Broward County, Florida has 250k kids & 250 schools - we have contracted for "suicide evaluations" of "selected" students. This is preposterous. Can and WILL PACEs please offer to provide the PACE tests and to provide a post-test evaluation and follow-up to my school district of 250K students and 15k teachers as part of a "suicide evaluation?" Consider it, please? Let me explain... Truthfully, it is the district's double-speak way of saying it wants to sick the...

Hello All, We've (school district of Broward County, FL) approved & contracted for "suicide evaluations" of "selected" students. Is this correct? I have not seen the suicide-evaluations but I have sat through the full yearly psychology presentation and the PD, professional development so teachers can better identify (target) children at risk (of being a problem in the future). I came away from these experiences convinced that district "solutions" like these are a big part of the problem.