Tagged With "Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder"
Blog Post
10 Simple Steps for Reducing Toxic Stress in the Classroom
As the brain science on adverse childhood experiences evolves, teaching must, too By Jim Hickman & Kathy Higgins We all know that when children aren’t well, they’re less likely to learn. More and more teachers recognize that children who can’t sit still in class, act out, or have asthma may be showing warning signs of a toxic exposure to childhood trauma. More than two decades ago, landmark research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente found that...
Blog Post
2019 Beyond Paper Tigers Conference Series - Why Take Course One and Course Two?
Community Resilience Initiative is officially launching a new series of blog posts, building to our 2019 Beyond Paper Tigers conference on June 25th - 27th. We’ll cover a range of topics relevant to conference material, events, and inspirations. In addition to the regular conference, CRI is offering two training add-on options on Tuesday June 25, 2019 prior to the conference: Resilience-Based Trainings, Course One and Two . https://criresilient.org/beyon...re-conference-event/ “A group of...
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
3 tips to close the poverty gap (smartbrief.com)
In US public schools, 51% of students in public schools come from low-income families. Decades of research show that children from low-income homes start kindergarten trailing one to three years behind their more economically advantaged peers. More recently, researchers have demonstrated the relationship between family income and brain structures, with the largest influence observed among the most disadvantaged children. Yet, many schools succeed with students from poverty. Here are three...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
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...
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
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...
Blog Post
A Memo to Susan Desmond-Hellmann, CEO of the Gates Foundation [HuffingtonPost.com]
I just finished reading your letter, What if? Thank you for the update on your work. The introductory paragraph is stirring: What if infectious diseases could no longer wreak havoc on poor communities? What if women and girls everywhere were empowered to transform their lives? What if all children - especially the poorest - had an equal opportunity to reach their full potential? I’m on board. What’s not to like? Well, I’ll tell you, Sue. As you note, some of the Gates Foundation initiatives...
Blog Post
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]...
Blog Post
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.
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
A second-grade teacher's unique homework policy is going viral. (upworthy.com)
Brandy Young kicked off the new school year with a note for her kids to pass on to their parents. When it made its way to social media, it quickly went viral: Her note struck a powerful chord with parents everywhere . So far, it's been shared nearly 70,000 times by moms and dads who are tired of playing "homework police" or just want a little more quality time with their kids at night. Brandy Young is right: The research on the effectiveness of homework is a mixed bag , especially for kids...
Blog Post
A Trauma-Informed Approach to Teaching Through Coronavirus - for Students Everywhere, Online or Not [washingtonpost.com]
By Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post, March 26, 2020 “Anxiety” is one of the words you hear frequently about our individual and collective reactions to the coronavirus pandemic — which has stopped public life in its tracks in much of the world. Kids are anxious. So are their parents and teachers and principals and superintendents and friends and elected officials. For those people who were anxious before covid-19, the sense of apprehension has only deepened. Given that, this post offers...
Blog Post
A Trauma-Informed Approach to Teaching Through Coronavirus [tolerance.org]
Experts from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network share their recommendations for educators supporting students during the COVID-19 crisis. By TEACHING TOLERANCE STAFF MARCH 23, 2020 L ast week, as schools across the nation closed their doors to slow the spread of the coronavirus, TT reached out to our community to learn what support you needed at this time. Among the most common responses was a call for trauma-informed practices to support students over the coming weeks and months.
Blog Post
A Trauma Intervention Program Designed for Use in Schools
A school-based trauma intervention in two Rhode Island schools reduced trauma symptoms by 35%, on average, in a school population where 91% of students showed elevated levels of trauma.
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
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,...
Blog Post
ACEs & African Americans Community on ACEs Connection
ACEs Connection envisions a resilient world where ALL people thrive. We are an anti-racist organization committed to the pursuit of social justice. In our work to promote resilience and prevent and mitigate ACEs, we intentionally embrace and uplift people who have historically not had a seat at the table. ACEs Connection celebrates the voices and tells the stories of people who have been barred from decision-making and who have shouldered the burden of systemic and economic oppression as the...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
ACEs Connection Info
ACEs Connection Welcome Tour What you get What you can do ACEs Connection How-Tos Directory How-To post a blog How-To add a picture How-To change your email settings And more ACEs Connection Roadmap to Resilience Toolkit Directory Assets mapping Logic model MOUs And more ACEs Connection Network Overview ACEsConnection.com and ACEsTooHigh.com ACEs, trauma-informed, and resilience-building Collective impact community of practice And more ACEs 101 FAQ ACEs, toxic stress, and epigenetics...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
ACEs Webinar: Jim Sporleder on Trauma-informed Schools
To join this webinar, register here . Trauma-informed schools: a conversation with Jim Sporleder, former principal of Lincoln High School, featured in the documentary Paper Tigers Date: Monday, November 19, 2018 Time: 3:00-4:00 pm PDT /6:00-7:00 pm EDT Jim will answer some prepared questions followed by an open question and answer period with participants. Topics that Jim will discuss include: How do you increase staff and community buy in for a trauma-informed school? How do you determine...
Blog Post
Adaptive Schools and Trauma Informed Practices
Author: John Matich, Training Associate and member of the Thinking Collaborative Futures Team .....In a trauma-informed school, the adults in the school community are prepared to recognize and respond to those who have been impacted by traumatic stress (ACEs). In addition, students are provided with clear expectations and communication strategies to guide them through stressful situations. The goal is to not only provide tools to cope with extreme situations but to create an underlying...
Blog Post
After Freshman Commits Suicide, Dean Secretly Gets Students to Tell “13 Reasons Why Not” (faithit.com)
After losing a freshman, Megan Abbott, to suicide four years ago, Oxford High School’s Dean of Students, Pam Fine, came up with the idea for the project. Pam wrote in a Facebook post on May 2nd: “This has been one of the hardest, but most rewarding weeks for me professionally. A small group of students took a big risk. They decided to start a raw and powerful dialogue about suicide. By putting themselves in front of 1,800 classmates and saying…look, I have a story, too. I have pain. I have...
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
Alternative Schools Network in Chicago Takes on Youth Trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
Click here to read the full article on the ASN website The Alternative Schools Network (ASN) Youth Resilience Project is an initiative that grew from the collective desire to develop and provide additional clinical resources for ASN Network schools. The Youth Resilience Project is dedicated to the cause of bringing knowledge, awareness, and support to schools around issues associated with youth trauma. Spreading the knowledge of trauma and its impacts on youth development became a mission of...
Blog Post
Amid Latest Suicides With School Shooting Ties, Columbine Families Share Lessons on Addressing Lasting Trauma (the74million.org)
Over the course of about a week, three people with ties to mass school shootings died by apparent suicide, bringing to the forefront conversations about the long-term trauma of people who suffer losses from violence. About a quarter of the people who witness a mass shooting develop post-traumatic stress disorder and a third develop acute stress disorder, according to estimates by the National Center for PTSD, a division of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. While most survivors show...
Blog Post
An Alternative to Suspension with Trauma-Informed Dynamic Mindfulness: Building Stress Resilience, Emotion Regulation and Empathy
At the November 2019 Northern California Safe and Healthy Schools Conference at UC Berkeley, Niroga Program Managers Sam Weiss and Fatima Ahmed facilitated a session incorporating the theory and practice of Dynamic Mindfulness (DMind) to a standing room only crowd.
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
An Important Event for Anyone in Higher Education in the Philadelphia Region
The Need for Trauma-Informed Curricula at Institutions of Higher Learning: A Call to Action On October 20th, Children's Crisis Treatment Center , The Philadelphia University Community and Trauma Counseling Program and the United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey are hosting a very special and important conversation for any one who is involved in training the next generation of service professionals - nurses, doctors, social workers, teachers, lawyers, community health...
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
An open letter to Governor Wolf:
Childhood Trauma: "The elephant in the [class] room".. . and it doesn't "just go away" Dear Governor Wolf and Education Secretary designee Rivera : I write regarding injured, marginalized children in our schools, to ask that you include them explicitly in a broad, “Healthy State” paradigm in your new administration. Read more at: WHYY NewsWorks http://lucidwitness.com/…/childhood-trauma-versus-public-e…/...
Blog Post
Announcing FREE Trauma-Informed Schools Book Club.
Announcing FREE Trauma-Informed Schools Book Club. Please join me in a community book club using the Facebook page Trauma-Informed Schools Book Club . https://www.facebook.com/groups/1938017869661667/ We will be starting with two chapters (16 & 17) from Supporting and Educating Traumatized Students: Second Edition that were made FREE online thanks to Oxford Psychology - one on Secondary Traumatic Stress, and another on Crises & Natural Disasters with chapter author Ben Fernandez .
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
Applying an Equity Lens to Social, Emotional, and Academic Development [rwjf.org]
Many students face barriers to healthy social, emotional, and academic development, but a range of strategies can help overcome those barriers. The Issue Social and emotional learning (SEL) equips young people with competencies to lead productive and healthy lives. There are barriers, however, that prevent many students of color and other marginalized youth from developing social and emotional competencies. For all students to benefit, SEL must be grounded in a larger context of equity and...
Blog Post
Are You at Risk for Secondary Traumatic Stress? [edutopia.org]
Caring is a finite resource. I learned that from an Ojibwa second grader. At the beginning of the school year, David (not his real name) would jerk his neck back to flick the bangs out of his light brown eyes and write, “I love Mario. I love Mario. I love Mario” to the bottom of the page, and then grin and ask, “What do you think, Mr. Todd?” Some days, the page would be filled with, “I love soccer.” In early October, David stopped playing soccer at recess. When I asked him why, he walked...
Blog Post
Arizona Educators Share What's Working to Create Trauma-Sensitive Schools (azednews.com)
Creating a supportive environment is helping reduce student behavior issues in Arizona schools and empowering students to pause before they respond instead of reacting to adverse events. Research shows experiencing six or more adverse childhood experiences increases risk factors for chronic diseases, which can reduce a person’s life by up to 20 years, said Marcia Stanton, coordinator of the Adverse Childhood Experience Initiative at Phoenix Children’s Hospital . Adverse childhood experiences...
Blog Post
Author: To Reach Struggling Students, Schools Need to Be More 'Trauma-Sensitive' [EdWeek.org]
A growing body of evidence highlights the connection between adverse childhood experiences and academic problems . The effects of trauma can impair a childs cognitive ability, while the stress of a dysfunctional or unstable home life can make children act out or shut down in the classroom, according to recent child-development research. While such findings are increasingly acknowledged, however, they have yet to broadly inform classroom practices or school-improvement initiatives, says Susan...
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
Opinion Stress is making our children ill; here is what we can do about it [SFChronicle.com]
I will take my oath of office today and have the honor of representing Silicon Valley in the U.S. House of Representatives. My political campaign succeeded because of the help of hundreds of students. Their ambition and drive will allow them to flourish, but I am concerned about their well-being. These students were volunteering because of a genuine passion for giving back to the community. But a few also told me that the campaign work was a release, or as one student put it “a respite from...
Blog Post
Opportunity to Participate in a Live Twitter Chat on Resilience
The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) invites you to join us on Wednesday, November 16, 2016 at 9:00 p.m. EDT for a live Twitter chat and discuss how adverse childhood experiences affect children’s well-being. Film director, James Redford (@jred5562) and educational leader, Jim Sporleder (@SporLin ) will co-faciliate this convening to explore strategies used by educators, therapists, pediatricians, and communities to disrupt cycles of violence and trauma. For those...
Blog Post
OPRAH AND “60 MINUTES” ON CHILDHOOD TRAUMA
Oprah does a great job emphasizing the change required to the perspective of adults in the way we try to understand — from the old, judgmental “What’s wrong with you?” to the more appropriate, insightful and caring question “What happened to you?”
Blog Post
OurSOLES youth leaders led trauma-informed presentation before educators and school staff
OurSOLES (Our Students of Leadership ~ Empowerment ~ Service) high school students from the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego, CA, led an interactive, hour-long trauma-informed presentation for Diego Valley and Diego Springs Public Charter School educators, tutors, school administration and staff last August 14, 2015.
Blog Post
Over 100 pastoral education students trained in trauma at regional meeting in Baltimore
The theme of trauma was selected for this year’s annual summer Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) Day because “clergy responses to trauma an have a significant impact on our own healing and in healing our communities,” as described in the planning committee welcome letter. Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore hosted the gathering of over 100 pastoral students from the Maryland, Washington, DC, and Northern Virginia region. Planning Committee Chair Ty Crowe, director of the Hospital’s Spiritual...