Tagged With "Learning Loss"
Blog Post
10 Things About Childhood Trauma Every Teacher Needs to Know [WeAreTeachers.com]
With grief, sadness is obvious. With trauma, the symptoms can go largely unrecognized because it shows up looking like other problems: frustration, acting out, difficulty concentrating, following directions or working in a group. Often students are misdiagnosed with anxiety, behavior disorders or attention disorders, rather than understanding the trauma that’s driving those symptoms and reactions. For children who have experienced trauma, learning can be a big struggle. But once trauma is...
Blog Post
2017 Spring Webinar Series: Trauma-Informed Approaches in Minnesota Schools
April 12, noon-1:30: Trauma-Informed Approaches in Minnesota Schools Dr. Mark Sander, Hennepin County; Stacy Bender-Fayette and Sharleen Zeman-Sperle, Peacemaker Resources Many Minnesota schools are trying innovative approaches to promote social emotional learning and to make the classroom a safe learning environment for children who have experienced trauma. This webinar is a chance to hear from three such innovators: Dr. Mark Sander, a psychologist working in the Minneapolis Public Schools...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
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
Blog Post
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.
Blog Post
African-American students with disabilities suspended at disproportionately high rates [edsource.org]
African-American special education students nationwide lose substantially more instruction time due to discipline than their white counterparts, according to a report by The Civil Rights Project at UCLA and the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard University. The report , “Disabling Punishment: The Need for Remedies to the Disparate Loss of Instruction Experienced by Black Students with Disabilities,” extrapolated its findings from federal data from 2014-15 and...
Blog Post
Afterschool Art Program Helps D.C. Youth Exorcise Fears Of Gun Violence[WAMU 88.5]
When U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stepped down last week after seven years on the job, he didn't talk about test scores or teacher quality. Rather, fighting back tears, he used the opportunity to talk about what he called the "greatest frustration" of his tenure — Washington not passing gun control legislation. "If I can leave you one number: 16,000. That in my first six years as Secretary of Education that's the number of young people who are killed across our...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
Opinion: Don’t assume that every student had a fun or warm holiday break (pbs.org)
The holidays can be a time of grief and sadness — a time when memories of our loved ones who have died come flooding back and our losses become magnified. During these milestones in the grief process, young people who have recently lost a loved one need particular support. It is important to consider that loss can take many forms for students: divorce, separation, incarceration, military deployment, deportation, moving and much more. Though different than a family member’s death, the process...
Blog Post
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.
Blog Post
Peek Inside a Classroom: Jose
Photo credit Max Klingensmith at flickr . Jose was one of the calmest, quietest, most peaceful boys in the classroom. The kind of boy everybody loves. ...
Blog Post
Post-Harvey, Houston Teachers Learn to Respond to Trauma [prweb.com]
One year after Hurricane Harvey, Houston-area teachers have a new tool to respond to children who have experienced trauma or distress through a new online professional development program. The program was developed through a collaboration between UNICEF USA , Mental Health America of Greater Houston (MHA of Greater Houston), and health simulation company Kognito . The program, titled Trauma-Informed Practices for K-12 Schools (TPS), is a 30-45-minute online simulation that builds educators’...
Blog Post
Potential impact of Trauma on special education eligibility
This is a follow up to my previous email concerning the PP v Compton class action lawsuit concerning adverse events and eligibility under the Americans with Disability act. I did a presentation at the Legal Issues in Special Education conference on April 24th. The participants consisted of special education directors, compliance officers and parent advocates The big surprise was that there was huge interest in this issue. It was standing room only in the room. Secondly even though this...
Blog Post
Program gives Spokane schools resources to help students rise above adversity
By Jim Allen , Thu., Oct. 24, 2019 Think of it as a well-school checkup. On Tuesday morning at Bemiss Elementary School, educators and health professionals spoke enthusiastically about something called Resilience in School Environments, or RISE. A collaboration between Kaiser Permanente and the Spokane and West Valley school districts, the RISE program is expected to lift up teachers and administrators and give them tools to cope with all the challenges of the modern student. The challenges...
Blog Post
Co-Regulation with Students " At-Risk"-- Calming Together
Co-regulation with Kids "At-Risk"-Calming Together Highlights and thoughts from an article by Howard I. Bath:Calming together: The pathway to self-control Neuroscience shows that humans develop their abilities for emotional self-regulation through connections with reliable caregivers who soothe and model in a process called “co-regulation.” Since many troubled young people have not experienced a reliable, comforting presence, they have difficulty regulating their emotions and impulses.
Blog Post
Coming soon: Philly School District families will have access to grief counseling, coronavirus support [inquirer.com]
For Philadelphia students and families having trouble coping with the loss of months of in-person school amid the trauma of a pandemic and a changing world, help is on the way. On Monday, the Philadelphia School District and Uplift, the Center for Grieving Children, will launch the Philly HopeLine, a hotline that will connect district children and families to grief support services, Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. said at a news conference Thursday. The resource comes in response to a...
Blog Post
CONNECTING WITH KIDS IN PAIN
Kids in pain cannot learn!!! Often your most difficult students are young people living in environments with Toxic Levels of Stress. These environments change the brain! The next time you are involved with a student that is escalating and beginning to loss control try some of the following ideas . 1. BE A THERMOSTAT- NOT A THERMOMETER Develop with-in your head a pause button. Slow down. Everything in your body will be telling you to speed up... remember emotions are very contagious.
Blog Post
Control, Predictability Can Help Counter Students' Trauma, Research Finds [blogs.edweek.org]
Interventions that help students think flexibly and feel more control over their learning may help counter the effects of disadvantage and trauma, suggests emerging research at the International Mind-Brain Education conference here. More than 1 in 3 U.S. children have experienced at least one major trauma—from abuse or neglect to the loss of a family member to death, prison, or drugs—by the time they enter kindergarten. By the end of their school years, nearly half have had at least one...
Blog Post
Creative Expression Webinars now offered at times that work for you!
Engaging webinars that will equip you with new tools to empower kids. Learn how to use creative expression to help kids develop important social-emotional learning skills and build resilience.
Blog Post
Curbing the Spread of COVID-19, Anxiety, and Learning Loss for Youth Behind Bars [blogs.edweek.org]
By Sarah D. Sparks, Education Week, May 4, 2020 As educators and leaders juggle remote learning schedules, food distribution, and how to get kindergartners to sit still on Zoom meetings, there's one particularly vulnerable group of students in danger of falling off the education radar: students in the juventile justice system. Coronavirus is spreading rapidly in pre- and post-trial correctional facilities across the United States, and the challenges of social distancing for students in...
Blog Post
Development and Implementation of Standards for Social and Emotional Learning in the 50 States (selpractices.org)
Development and Implementation of Standards for Social and Emotional Learning in the 50 States · SEL Thrive { "@context" : "http://schema.org", "@type" : "Organization", "name" : "SEL Thrive", "url" : "https://www.selpractices.org/", "logo": "https://www.selpractices.org/apple-touch-icon-180x180.png", "sameAs" : [ "https://www.facebook.com/", "https://twitter.com/" ], // "contactPoint" : [{ // "@type" : "ContactPoint", // "telephone" : "+1-555-555-555", // "contactType" : "customer service"...
Blog Post
District finds that creating more trauma-informed schools requires a change of culture [thenotebook.org]
“The world of thinking about trauma, the importance of school climate and social-emotional learning is 20, 30, 40 years behind the world of instruction." Joanna Schwartz, a 2nd-grade teacher at Eliza B. Kirkbride Elementary School, was about to take a scheduled break and desperately needed a place to have peace and quiet. But the only place she could find was a broom closet. A few years earlier, in another school, Schwartz said teachers were baffled by a 3rd grader who continually fell...
Blog Post
Do you live in Arizona, Hawaii, California, Nevada or the US Pacific Islands? Come to our no-cost mental and school mental health Winter Institute!
Do you live in Arizona, Hawaii, California, Nevada or the US Pacific Islands?If so...Check it out! 👇 NO COST. MENTAL HEALTH & SCHOOL MENTAL HEALTH WORKFORCE. AMAZING FACULTY. JANUARY 14, 15, & 16th! LONG BEACH, CA. JOIN US. 🤝 👏 Learn more here: http://bit.ly/mhttc-winterinstitute-flyer Register here: http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07egq2f9gaebafa6bd&llr=8wdk4ubab
Blog Post
Dr. Dipesh Navsaria: Schools as symptoms, not the source [The Cap Times]
There has been a lot of hand-wringing in the local press about the state of the Madison Metropolitan School District, particularly around behavior. In particular, the behavior education plan implemented over the last several years — intended to reduce exclusionary practices and use a more progressive approach to discipline — has come under fire for essentially allowing a permissive, low-consequence environment that affects learning as well as staff morale. I read these with interest — my two...
Blog Post
Education Transformations - Providing Soc/Emot Training to Schools & More
Education Transformations is a company that works with districts, schools, teachers, and other organizations to improve Social/Emotional Intelligence (EQ), and what we call Relational Competency. We are San Diego, CA based, but can travel.
Blog Post
Educational Trauma
Greetings! As a clinical and forensic psychologist and P16 educator, I am very concerned about the ACEs in education. I believe Educational Trauma is the "inadvertent perpetration and perpetuation of victimization by educational systems against...
Blog Post
Five Ways to Support Students Affected by Trauma [greatergood.berkeley.edu]
For some students, school is not just a place of learning and growth but also a refuge from abuse. Data suggest that, on average, every classroom has at least one student affected by trauma. According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, close to 40 percent of students in the U.S. have been exposed to some form of traumatic stressor in their lives, with sexual assault, physical assault, and witnessing domestic violence being the three most prevalent. These types of stressors,...
Blog Post
FOCUS Program helps kids exposed to trauma [Turlock (California) Journal]
Handle with care.” Those three small words can have a huge impact on students throughout Turlock Unified School District who may have been exposed to violence or trauma, thanks to a program that has quietly worked to help lessen the effects of traumatic experiences on children throughout Stanislaus County, CA over the past year and a half. On Tuesday evening, the Board of Trustees received an update on the Focusing On Children Under Stress, or FOCUS, Program, implemented throughout the...
Blog Post
Four Core Priorities for Trauma-Informed Distance Learning [kqed.org]
By Kara Newhouse Apr 6 Trauma-informed teaching cannot be simplified to cookie-cutter practices. Take this example: a teacher worked with a student to develop a silent signal that he could use when he needed extra breaks during class. Hearing how well it worked, another teacher tried to apply the signal without first building a relationship with the student. It bombed. With the second teacher, the signal became “an angry ear tug instead of a trauma-informed ear tug,” said Alex Shevrin Venet...
Blog Post
FREE MASTER CLASS FOR EDUCATORS:
FREE MASTER CLASS FOR EDUCATORS: "The Top 10 Truths Every Teacher Needs to Know About Trauma" This 60-minute Master Class is an opportunity for teachers to take their FIRST STEP into becoming "trauma-informed." Learn how trauma impacts your students' brains, bodies and behavior, and the approaches that can make your job easier and less overwhelming! TUESDAY, May 7th @1pm (PST) - ONLINE Certificate of Attendance available for attendees Link for Deets: https://www.traumacamp.com/masterclass...
Blog Post
From Trauma Informed To Trauma Transformed: Achieving Post-Traumatic GROWTH for the Youths In Our Most Disenfranchised Public Schools and Communities
Roberto Rivera was a troubled, addicted youth engaged in criminal behavior who discovered his path to transformation in the pit of his traumatic pain. He harnessed the fire of early childhood trauma to change himself from being a problem to being a solution, not just in his own life, but also in the lives of many, many other under-privileged and under-performing young people. The name of his solution is Fulfill The Dream (FTD). FTD is a unique, hip-hop(e) based, Social Emotional Learning...
Blog Post
Gathering in Topeka, Kansas for the Educators’ Art of Facilitation Chapter III
I never believed that a man who abuses anyone physically, emotionally or verbally is simply a monster.That's too simple.There is a reason why men do what they do, and don't do and in order to help men and women to not be hurtful to themselves or others we must as I said in my last post ”help them heal.” We must advocate for a world in which we don't punish, we transform. I have always believed this on many issues, from domestic violence to drug addiction to other acts of criminality. We...
Blog Post
Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side (Eve L. Ewing)
In the spring of 2013, approximately 12,000 children in Chicago received notice that their last day of school would be not only the final day of the year, but also the final day of their school’s very existence. The nation’s third largest school district would eventually shutter 53 schools, citing budget limitations, building underutilization, and concerns about academic performance. Of the thousands of displaced students, 94% were low-income and 88% were African-American, leading critics to...
Blog Post
Good Choices FEEL Good - An Early SEL Lesson from Grandma Boom / ORAEYC Blog
The little baby dinosaur was afraid to come out to play.....teaching empathy
Blog Post
Guide - Creating Trauma-Informed Policies: A Practice Guide for School and Mental Health Leadership
Author, Leora Wolf-Prusan, EdD, School Mental Health lead for SAMHSA's Mental Health Technology Center Pacific Southwest http://mhttcnetwork.org/mhttc/mhttc-psw.html Creating compassionate policies is a cornerstone strategy of educational leadership. This guide provides a deep dive into developing, implementing, and evaluating trauma-informed and compassionate school policies. It highlights four "choice points" for education and mental health leadership: Choice Point 1: Names &...
Blog Post
How Bibliotherapy Can Help Students Open Up About Their Mental Health (kqed.org)
Mental health concerns, like anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, can affect a student’s ability to concentrate, form friendships and thrive in the classroom. Educators and school counselors often provide Social and Emotional Learning programs (SEL) in order to help these students, as well as school-based therapeutic support groups. However, even in these forums, getting teenagers to speak about their problems can be challenging, especially when they feel like outsiders...
Blog Post
How Facial Expressions of Adults Affect Children
Karen Murphy, who is principal at Free Orchards Elementary School where I work, is a champion of trauma awareness and is working hard to lead our school in the direction of trauma sensitive practices -and away from the policies & procedures that have historically made well-intentioned school districts part of the "pipeline to prison". One of her sayings is "fix yer face", which means simply to put a warm expression on your face, consciously and regularly.
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
How One Philadelphia After-school Program Works to Be Trauma-informed [youthtoday.org]
On an afternoon in October, kids in the Sunrise of Philadelphia after-school program made tissue-paper marigolds, assembled little altars and created masks. It was the Day of the Dead celebration held by Sunrise partner, Fleisher Art Memorial . They wrote poems about people who were no longer with them, either lost to death or simply separated across distance — a possibility in this largely immigrant and refugee community. The activity gave them a chance to explore loss and sadness, which —...
Blog Post
How Severe, Ongoing Stress can Affect a Child's Brain [Associated Press via kstp.com]
A quiet, unsmiling little girl with big brown eyes crawls inside a carpeted cubicle, hugs a stuffed teddy bear tight, and turns her head away from the noisy classroom. The safe spaces, quiet times and breathing exercises for her and the other preschoolers at the Verner Center for Early Learning are designed to help kids cope with intense stress so they can learn. But experts hope there's an even bigger benefit — protecting young bodies and brains from stress so persistent that it becomes...
Blog Post
How to Keep Children's Stress From Turning Into Trauma [nytimes.com]
By Stacy Steinberg, The New York Times, May 7, 2020 Children may be processing the disruptions in their lives right now in ways the adults around them do not expect: acting out, regressing, retreating or even seeming surprisingly content. Parents need to know that all of this is normal, experts say, and there are some things we can do to help. “Our natural response to scary things is biologically to release stress hormones,” said Dr. Nadine Burke Harris , a pediatrician and surgeon general...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
Schools Spotlight Social, Emotional Learning Amid Complex Times [fosters.com]
By Hadley Barndollar, Fosters.com, October 20, 2019 In a second-grade classroom at New Franklin Elementary School, a warm flurry of compliments. Seated in a circle, girls praise each other’s dresses and sweatshirts. A boy gives his friend kudos for helping him clean up after an activity the previous week. They all murmur the teacher-advised response — “thank you” — through toothy smiles. It’s a lesson on compliments. Down the hallway, in a first-grade circle, students talk about inclusion...
Blog Post
Schools Spotlight Social, Emotional Learning Amid Complex Times [fosters.com]
By Hadley Barndollar, Fosters.com, October 20, 2019 In a second-grade classroom at New Franklin Elementary School, a warm flurry of compliments. Seated in a circle, girls praise each other’s dresses and sweatshirts. A boy gives his friend kudos for helping him clean up after an activity the previous week. They all murmur the teacher-advised response — “thank you” — through toothy smiles. It’s a lesson on compliments. Down the hallway, in a first-grade circle, students talk about inclusion...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
Stretching against stress: Auburn students find balance through yoga class (auburnpub.com)
While other students in Auburn Junior High School have been bound to their desks Tuesday afternoons this school year, Kristi Newton's health class has been doing yoga. The yoga provides physical exercise but the purpose of the class goes beyond that. Newton began using yoga as a way to cope with the unexpected death of her brother-in-law, Peter Thomson, around four years ago. She eventually thought that since yoga helped her get through her loss, it might be able to help her students deal...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
Suspending Students Costs Billions in Economic Losses, New Study Finds (edweek.org)
A growing cadre of public policy researchers and lawmakers agree that school discipline rates remain high for black and Hispanic students, and those with disabilities, but a new study from the University of California takes it a step further by connecting suspension rates to major economic impacts. Researchers found that suspensions lead to lower graduation rates, which in turn leads to lower tax revenue and higher taxpayer costs for criminal justice and social services. The researchers...