Tagged With "Racial tension"
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8 Benefits of Yoga for Kids (wakeup-world.com)
Children these days deal with stress, distractions, peer pressure, over-stimulation, etc., and for this reason, the low-cost practice of yoga can benefit their well being immensely. Little ones have their own battles, races, and tension, and to bear it all, they require a calm mind and a healthy body. 1. Yoga Improves Concentration 2. Yoga Builds Confidence and Self-Esteem 3. Yoga Alleviates Stress (Something We All Face) 4. Yoga Promotes a Healthy Body and Mind 5. Yoga Teaches Body Balance...
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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.
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Dear Teacher
Dear Teacher I remember you and I would imagine you remember me well. I am your student. We have shared space for many years yet have never come to know one another. Although I have known you over twenty years and spent more time with you than even my closest friends and family, our relationship has remained transactional, tense, contentious and at times violent. We have cursed, threatened and insulted each other, I have thrown chairs and spat at you and you have restrained me multiple...
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How It Feels & How We Heal: Parenting with ACEs Chat Quotes (You Tube, Database, PDFs, Links)
Parenting with ACEs is sharing inspiration, information, and expertise from our chat series in 3 formats. Parenting with ACEs: How It Feels & How We Heal Quote Collection (pdf version below as well) Quotes Database (pdf version below as well) Links to Chat Transcripts and before and after-the-chat blog posts. Thanks to everyone who showed up, who shared, and who is doing the important work that is our mission (prevent ACEs, heal trauma, build resilience). We know that work happens...
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Incorporating Trauma Informed Practice and ACEs into Professional Curricula - a Toolkit
The toolkit is designed to aid faculty and teachers in a variety of disciplines, specifically social work, medicine, law, education, and counseling, to develop or integrate critical content on adverse childhood experiences and trauma informed care into new or existing curricula of graduate education programs. This toolkit provides an overview of colleges and universities that have courses in trauma-informed practice and ACEs science. Most of the toolkit comprises content for a course on...
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Self- Regulation Begins with Dogs, Tense Knots and Calm Socks
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...
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Superkid Power Guidebook
In Southern Oregon, Janai Mestrovich, MS, Early Learning & Child Development, labels her curriculum Empowering Superkids. The focus is on pre-K and Kindergarten kids and teaching them to know her/himself and tap inner resources of mind/body/emotions/breathing and have skills to make good choices and feel like a SUPERKID. Teaching self awareness, self respect and communication/collaboration are essential towards resiliency. Janai has developed and taught the Superkid Guidebook over a 40...
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Teaching self awareness and stress recognition to kids age 4-6
Janai Mestrovich (BS/MS, Family & Child Development), teacher and developer of 'Superkid Power' (Ashland, OR) passed this along to me regarding how she uses finger activated mood card to measure temperature and kid stress levels: 40 Pre-K children learned how to measure their stress level this morning by measuring hand temp. with mood cards. Blue, happy-peaceful-very calm; Green, calm; Red, tight muscles/upset; Black Tense/grit teeth. We chanted and drummed appropriately - tense drumming...
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Teaching Teenagers to Cope With Social Stress (nytimes.com)
Almost four million American teenagers have just started their freshman year of high school. Can they learn better ways to deal with all that stress and insecurity? New research suggests they can. Though academic and social pressures continue to pile on in high school, teenagers can be taught effective coping skills to skirt the pitfalls of anxiety and depression. David S. Yeager, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and a leading voice in the growing...
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It Takes a Suburb: A Town Struggles to Ease Student Stress (nytimes.com)
Small rocks from the beaches of eastern Massachusetts began appearing at Lexington High School last fall. They were painted in pastels and inscribed with pithy advice: Be happy.… Mistakes are O.K.… Don’t worry, it will be over soon. They had appeared almost by magic, boosting spirits and spreading calm at a public high school known for its sleep-deprived student body. The rocks, it turns out, were the work of a small group of students worried about rising anxiety and depression among their...
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Re: Essentials for an ACEs, trauma-informed, resilience-building school system
To my knowledge and what Jane Stevens shares, we were the first high school in the country to implement a trauma-informed model. I know there are a few high schools that have implemented a trauma-informed model, but I can't speak for them or share there approach....however, I know that the few I have heard about, have had very positive outcomes. Leisa at Paladin has done some very good work and Jane posted an article a few months back of a high school that had implemented trauma informed...
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To Help Students Learn, Engage the Emotions [Well.Blogs.NYTimes.com]
Before she became a neuroscientist, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang was a seventh-grade science teacher at a school outside Boston. One year, during a period of significant racial and ethnic tension at the school, she struggled to engage her students in a unit on human evolution. After days of apathy and outright resistance to Ms. Immordino-Yang’s teaching, a student finally asked the question that altered her teaching — and her career path — forever: “Why are early hominids always shown with dark...
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Trauma in Schools and Classrooms- Step #1
Young people who have experienced trauma are literally living in a world of pain which shows in their challenging behavior. Unfortunately professionals and caregivers often react in ways that perpetuate conflict and pain. Effective intervention requires a deeper understanding on the origins and management of this pain-based behavior. - James P. Anglin Your most difficult students, the young people who are extremely difficult to motivate and to manage are children in pain. We now know what...
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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 SENSITIVE" CARE IN SCHOOLS Pt. 1
“ Troubled children with histories of abuse and neglect who show up in clinics, schools, hospitals, and police stations, the traumatic roots of their behaviors are less obvious, particularly because they rarely talk about being hit, abandoned, or molested, even when asked. Eighty two (82%) of the traumatized children seen in the National Child Traumatic Stress Network do not meet the criteria for PTSD. Because often they are shut down, suspicious, or aggressive they now receive...
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The Traumatic Impact of Racism on Young People and How to Talk About It [Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg]
Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg (Keynote speaker from the recent Creating a Resilient Community Conference) shared the excerpt from his book Reaching Teens titled The Traumatic Impact of Racism on Young People and How to Talk About It. This is a valuable resource for anyone interacting with youth and we are providing the excerpt as an attachment here for you to read and share. Also, Dr. Ginsburg will be coming back to our community (virtually) and you’ll be invited to his workshop. Look out for the...
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A Zoom Course on How to Create Trauma Responsive Institutions
I am teaching at three hour affordable Zoom course at Rutgers Graduate School of Social Work on how to create trauma response schools, organizations and businesses. It is July 31 and it is easy to enroll and you get a discount code for my new book (which ties in) titled: Trauma Doesn't Stop at the School Door (just released from Teachers College Press, June 2020). Here's a link to the course: https://ssw-web.rutgers.edu/ssw/ce/index.php?m=catalog&f=4 I cannot think of a time in which we...
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SCHOOLS LOOK TO ADVANCE RACIAL EQUITY WITH A FOCUS ON TEACHERS [Wall Street Journal]
Brooke Brown has taught English language arts and ethnic studies in Tacoma, Wash., for the past 14 years. In September, the state named her 2021 Washington Teacher of the Year. Ms. Brown is also a biracial Black woman and a participant in a new program in her region aimed at retaining teachers of color, in a state where 88% of teachers in 2019 were white, according to a state agency. The program, the Educators of Color Leadership Community, “has been instrumental in me not just finding my...
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‘A lost generation’: Surge of research reveals students sliding backward, most vulnerable worst affected [The Washington Post]
After the U.S. education system fractured into Zoom screens last spring, experts feared millions of children would fall behind. Hard evidence now shows they were right. A flood of new data — on the national, state and district levels — finds students began this academic year behind. Most of the research concludes students of color and those in high-poverty communities fell further behind their peers, exacerbating long-standing gaps in American education. A study being released this week by...
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Announcing Trauma-Informed Education Courses!
Registration is now open for two summer sessions of this professional development course for educators! Designed to bridge the gap from knowing about trauma to being able to fully implement a trauma-informed approach in the classroom, this course will explore the key principles of a trauma-informed approach, and how they can be applied in an school setting to achieve equitable and just outcomes.
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In a California Desert, Sheriff's Deputies Settle Schoolyard Disputes. Black Teens Bear the Brunt. [propublica.org]
By Emily Elena Dugdale and Irena Hwang, ProPublica, September 29, 2021 Barron Gardner, a high school history teacher in Southern California’s Antelope Valley, stared down Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies during an online meeting in April, trying to keep his composure. Gardner, 41, had become a reluctant spokesperson for a growing movement, driven primarily by Black and Latino residents, to get LASD deputies off school campuses. His wife, who's also a teacher, worried about...
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Why Kids May Be Melting Down at School [nytimes.com]
By Jessica Grose, The New York Times, October 20, 2021 I have heard from many readers and friends that their kids are struggling to adjust to in-person schooling this year. For the little ones, there’s more separation anxiety, which means more tears at drop-off, and struggles to even get out the door. For older children and teens, I’m hearing that some previously motivated kids are less engaged. Perhaps they fell behind during remote learning and feel discouraged now that they’re back in the...
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Some teachers alarmed by Florida civics training approach on religion, slavery (tampabay.com)
Several South Florida high school educators are alarmed that a new state civics initiative designed to prepare students to be “virtuous citizens” is infused with a Christian and conservative ideology after a three-day training session in Broward County last week. Teachers who spoke to the Times/Herald said they don’t object to the state’s new standards for civics, but they do take issue with how the state wants them to be taught. “It was very skewed,” said Barbara Segal, a 12th-grade...
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How much would the NAS poverty reduction packages reduce referrals to CPS and foster care placements? Would they reduce racial disproportionality in child welfare? (nasonline.org).
Because of a collaboration with Columbia University and UW-Madison, we have answers to these questions. By Peter Peter Pecora, Casey Family Programs, March 17, 2023 - Overview The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recently released a “ roadmap ” to reduce child poverty by as much as half through the implementation of a series of social policy packages. The aim of this study was to simulate the reductions in Child Protective Services (CPS) involvement and foster care placements that are...
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Re: How much would the NAS poverty reduction packages reduce referrals to CPS and foster care placements? Would they reduce racial disproportionality in child welfare? (nasonline.org).
To put this important data driven study in perspective look at its conclusions from the other end of the telescope: A substantial amount of child abuse is caused by family stress due to poverty which is created by public policy.
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Re: Announcing Trauma-Informed Education Courses!
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