Tagged With "SB 98"
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Some 350 Florida Leaders Expected to Attend Think Tank with Dr. Vincent Felitti, Co-Principal Investigator of the ACE Study; Expert on ACEs Science
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...
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Teaching Through Coronavirus: What Educators Need Right Now (tolerance.org)
On Monday we asked our community of educators what they need in the face of uncertainty caused by school closures and the COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly 2,000 educators responded, and the range of those responses illustrates the incredible responsibilities they feel for their students’ learning and well-being. More than 98 percent were facing school closures—and the ensuing consequences fell on educators quickly. Overwhelmingly, these educators requested resources they could easily share with...
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New Elementary and Secondary Education Law Includes Specific “Trauma-Informed Practices” Provisions
Legislation to replace the 14 year-old No Child Left Behind law—The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) signed by President Obama on Dec. 10—was widely praised by the administration, legislators of both parties in the House and Senate, and the organizations concerned about education policy from the NEA to the Education Trust. The consensus is that the bill is not perfect but provides a needed recalibration of federal authority over the states in education policy while protecting...
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New Resource Guide for Child Sexual Abuse/Exploitation Prevention
Greetings, ACN Community! I wanted to share this fantastic new resource guide developed by one of the work groups from the Georgia Statewide Human Trafficking Task Force. This guide provides background on best practice, principles of prevention, identifying resources for the classroom, developing a prevention plan, age appropriate teaching suggestions, analysis of specific programs, and guidelines for implementation and evaluation. It is really quite thorough and is full of excellent ideas...
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Brain Development and Academic Achievement
"As much as 20% of the gap in test scores could be explained by maturational lags in the frontal and temporal lobes. ... The influence of poverty on children’s learning and achievement is mediated by structural brain development. To avoid...
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Butte Valley teachers work to expand students’ options [Siskiyou Daily News]
By David Smith / dsmith@siskiyoudaily.com Even though it serves just 98 students in an economically depressed area, Butte Valley High School in Dorris [CA] is offering more opportunities than ever for those students to expand everything from their creativity to their career options. Much like an eight person football team – which BVHS fields each year – teachers at the school take on different roles throughout the day . Instead of the star linebacker also being the team’s kicker, an English...
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Let Her Learn: Stopping School Pushout: Overview and Key Findings (National Women's Law Center)
The National Women’s Law Center’s 2017 Let Her Learn Survey2 of 1,003 girls ages 14-18 shows that being called a racial slur is a common experience shared by all girls of color, with one third to more than two in five of them saying they have had this experience (Asian and Pacific Islander girls reported the highest rates), compared to just over one eighth of white girls.3 The Let Her Learn Survey also reveals that more than 1 in 5 girls (21 percent) have been sexually assaulted,4 with LGBTQ...
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Making the Most of Parents’ Time at School (edutopia.org)
My first month teaching, I peeked in on the first parent meeting of the year, and a lone parent sat listening to the presentation. There were over 500 students in the school. Eight years later, over 300 families attended that meeting. Our biggest challenge had been getting parents—who often didn’t like school themselves—to see us as a loving and supportive community, so we deliberately fostered an environment in which families could feel comfortable. If a serious discussion about a student...
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The Relentless School Nurse: ACEs Impact Nurses More Than We Realized!
I ran across this message on www.acesconnection.com and not only did it catch my attention, but it also made me want to dig deeper. Could it be true that nurses have a higher ACEs score than other healthcare professionals? It seemed true in this small survey, but was this a representation of a trend? If it was, the implications in nursing practice could be tremendous and concerning. What I found was that there is a grand canyon gap in research. The minimal studies that do exist confirm that...
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Trauma-sensitive teacher
This is a good article that identifies key reasons why educators need to be trauma-informed.
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Understanding and Initiating Trauma-Informed Change - Workshop Offering
Cultivate Change Leadership Skills for a “Trauma-Informed” Approach January 16-17th, 2020 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM EDT Please join us for this two-day deep-dive workshop. Most people working in schools and social services are saying things just got harder. Mental health issues, disruptive behaviors, and addiction are adding stressful new challenges for families and institutions already feeling overwhelmed. We try to address these issues one-by-one - by “referring out” - hoping a doctor or mental...
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Using Meditation to Help Close the Achievement Gap [Well.Blogs.NYTimes.com]
Closing the so-called achievement gap between poor inner-city children and their more affluent suburban counterparts is among the biggest challenges for education reformers. The success of some schools’ efforts suggests that meditation might significantly improve children’s school performance – and help close that gap. In 2007, James Dierke, then the principal of the Visitacion Valley Middle School in a troubled neighborhood in San Francisco, was determined to improve both the quality of...
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YBRS survey and report from Monroe County, New York
Elizabeth Meeker, an ACEs Connection member from Monroe County, New York shared that her county schools added ACEs questions to their Youth Behavioral Risk Survey (YBRS) in 2015, which is administered to students in schools. They were kind enough to share the instrument as well as a summary report of findings (both attached here). Elizabeth has indicated that she is available to answer questions that you all may have about the implementation of the survey. Thank you Elizabeth, for sharing!
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Re: Could Parkland Shooting Be Prevented? Yes, and Runcie Knew How
Please see the attached report that demonstrates the effectiveness of the interventions - seen in the Paper Tigers movie: Higher Resilience and School Performance Among Students with Disproportionately High Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) at Lincoln High, in Walla Walla, Washington, 2009 to 2013 Research Report, February 2015 Conclusions This s tudy provides empirical support for the thesis that systemic changes in school practices, ones developed with the support of the community to be...
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Bringing hope and healing to all of us through all of us.
It is happening. The grand experiment of full school distance learning is on for teachers and families of California. Educators have been asked to source some sort of magic to heal the disease of a broken educational system as it crumbles under the pressures of inconsistent and insufficient funding, tremendous variance in school community capacity for distance learning, and countless organizational structures being taxed to their limits. The pandemic continues, job losses increase, and fires...
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Hope and Progress, No Matter What! — an ACEs Connection/Cambia Health Foundation “Better Normal”, Oct. 22, 2020
The election is upon us. In two short weeks, we voters in this country decide who will lead us for the next four years. We have the opportunity to embrace — as a national priority — the tenets of understanding, nurturing and healing that underlie the science of adverse childhood experiences and move in a direction that embraces cultural and racial equity and anti-racism. Or not.
What is clear is that no matter what, the ACEs movement will continue.
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Teaching with purpose: ACEs aware, healing-informed.
Listening to the voices from current classrooms, the social-emotional needs that students are coming into classrooms are intense and demonstrate the importance of additional commitments for well-being and self-care. Schools and communities must recognize that teachers have ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) too. Similarly, they enter the profession as “wounded healers," being charged with filling needy hearts with hope. The levels of toxic stress and compassion fatigue are increasing...
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New Resource: Strategies for Trauma-Informed School Communities
The California Essentials for Childhood Initiative is excited to share a newly developed attached, “Strategies for Trauma-Informed School Communities: Practices to Improve Resiliency in School-Aged Children and Address Adverse Childhood Experiences”. This new resource is intended to assist state and local public health programs, child-serving systems, non-profits, and philanthropic organizations in their efforts to educate about the need for trauma-informed school policies and practices that...
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New Resource: Strategies for Trauma-Informed School Communities
The California Essentials for Childhood Initiative is excited to share a newly developed attached, “Strategies for Trauma-Informed School Communities: Practices to Improve Resiliency in School-Aged Children and Address Adverse Childhood Experiences”. This new resource is intended to assist state and local public health programs, child-serving systems, non-profits, and philanthropic organizations in their efforts to educate about the need for trauma-informed school policies and practices that...
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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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Educators share strategies to help students, staff heal from pandemic trauma
The stress, fear, grief and loneliness of the pandemic has weighed hard on school-aged children. A teacher, a parent and a school administrator offer strategies for moving beyond loss to healing.