Tagged With "Ben David"
Blog Post
A Growth Mindset Could Buffer Kids From Negative Academic Effects of Poverty (ww2.kqed.org)
Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck , along with other education researchers interested in growth mindset, have done numerous studies showing that when students believe their intelligence can grow and change with effort, they perform better on academic tests. These findings have sparked interest and debate about how to encourage a growth mindset in students both at home and at school. Now, a national study of tenth-graders in Chile found student mindsets are correlated to achievement on...
Blog Post
A South LA high school's journey back from the brink (edsource.org)
Claudia Rojas had a regular routine she followed most days during the 2012-13 school year, the year she took a job as one of three principals at the newly opened Augustus F. Hawkins High School in South Los Angeles. She would get up in the morning, have breakfast and then cry her way to work. Hawkins, as it’s known, is a part of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Pilot School program , which was established in 2007 to relieve overcrowding at Belmont High School in central L.A. The...
Blog Post
After the fire, a school district gone [EdSource.org]
Andrew and Ariya Boone got the call from Paradise Elementary at 9:30 a.m. on Nov. 8. Fire was roaring toward the town of Paradise and they had to come immediately to pick up their three boys. Andrew raced to the school as Ariya frantically packed the family’s most treasured belongings and soothed their small daughter while the sky, which had been relatively clear just an hour before, turned so dark that it felt like “10 o’clock at night at 9:30 in the morning.” “It was insane…the fire was...
Blog Post
Are California’s Mental Health Dollars Helping Kids? [CaliforniaHealthline.org]
California schools get hundreds of millions of dollars a year from the state to identify and assist disabled children who have mental health problems. But we don’t know how the money is spent or if it is helping the kids perform better in school. That’s the main finding of a recent report by the California State Auditor, and it will be on the agenda Wednesday at a hearing of the Senate’s mental health committee. “It appears we give all this money to the schools,...
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
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...
Blog Post
Pacific Southwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center Summer 2019 Learning Institute!
The Pacific Southwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center is incredibly excited to announce that registration is open for our Pacific Southwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center Summer 2019 Learning Institute ! What: Two days of incredibly high quality faculty (e.g. David Shonfeld from the National School Crisis & Bereavement Center! Yolo Akili Robinson from the Black Emotional & Mental Health Collective!) offering intensive learning sessions to support the mental health...
Blog Post
Pittsburgh's 'Dr. Stress' plans a new program for troubled students [Post-Gazette.com]
Only in this century have science and society come to understand the mental and physical repercussions of a rough childhood. But 18 years after publication of the groundbreaking Adverse Childhood Experiences study and multiple follow-up studies, few resources yet exist to help children contend with or avoid the troubling list of childhood adversity — sexual, verbal and physical abuse; neglect; poverty; community violence; and bullying, among others. These exposures cumulatively scar a...
Blog Post
D.C. City Council Considers Keeping Suspended Students In School (npr.org)
NPR's Scott Simon talks to Washington, D.C., city council member David Grosso about his proposal to ban out-of-school suspensions in the District's public and charter schools. GROSSO: Well, studies have shown us that over the past number of years, as people have looked at suspensions - that once you've been suspended once, you're more likely to be suspended again and again and again and again. There have been schools now in D.C. that have chosen to not do suspensions at all already, and...
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
Discipline reform gets boost in California budget (edsource.org)
Tucked inside last week’s state budget deal was some good news for California’s school discipline reform advocates — an additional $15 million for tackling issues such as bullying and trauma students have experienced, and training teachers and administrators in alternatives to traditional approaches to discipline. The $15 million will go to both the Orange County Department of Education and the Butte County Department of Education, which will contract with a college or university to develop...
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
Education Secretary Urges Schools to Tackle Racism, Teach Empathy (wnpr.org)
The rise of the Black Lives Matter movement has placed attention on longstanding institutional racism and the racial bias that exists throughout society. But it's also led to resistance, as well as rising tensions between police and people of color. Education Secretary John King said a big part of this problem could be tackled if schools teach empathy. "As an educator, part of our role is to help students to see the world through others' eyes," King said. One way to do that, he said, is to...
Blog Post
Gage Middle School pilots transcendental meditation as model of ‘self-care’ (lausd.org)
L.A. Unified mental health experts say that self-care is the key to not simply surviving but thriving during the holidays and other times of stress. This means slowing down and taking time for yourself. Stretch your muscles before you get up in the morning, stick to your exercise routine and take time to take a deep breath and slow down. Through a grant from the California Endowment , funded by the David Lynch Foundation , students and staff at Gage Middle School are practicing...
Blog Post
Healing ACE's
Healing Childhood Trauma I’d like to thank each member of ACE’s Connection for all your work helping and supporting children through various activities and organizations. You are clearly a collection of people who care about the children of the world. It is in recognition of these efforts that I ask you to consider two books on healing childhood trauma. They represent a life-time partnership dedicated to raising and educating healthy children. Secondly, I’d like to ask you for a word of...
Blog Post
Here’s how Beach High in Long Beach has reduced suspensions by 71% [PressTelegram.com]
Some kids just need a break. And they get two in Britt Sexton’s art classes at Beach High School. “I have an alarm that goes off twice a period,” Sexton said. “This Beyonce song comes on. And the kids stop what they’re doing.” Then she and the students do squats. Twenty of them. “It gives them a chance to get up,” Sexton said. “Some of them will dance while they’re squatting.” It’s her way of implementing one of the principles of a pilot program at the Long Beach Unified School District...
Blog Post
How a tiny Native American community's trauma might impact education law (edsource.org)
A lawsuit brought on behalf of schoolchildren in the most remote Native American community in the United States is addressing an emerging question in public education — namely, are school districts required to provide disability services to children who’ve suffered trauma related to poverty and discrimination. U.S. District Judge Steven P. Logan last week denied a request by the federal government to dismiss most of the case involving children at the Havasupai Elementary School, which is...
Blog Post
How a tiny Native American community's trauma might impact education law (edsource.org)
A lawsuit brought on behalf of schoolchildren in the most remote Native American community in the United States is addressing an emerging question in public education — namely, are school districts required to provide disability services to children who’ve suffered trauma related to poverty and discrimination. U.S. District Judge Steven P. Logan last week denied a request by the federal government to dismiss most of the case involving children at the Havasupai Elementary School, which is...
Blog Post
How to End the School-to-Prison Pipeline? Stop Treating Disabled and Minority Students as Criminals [PSMag.com]
Last October, a video of School Resource Officer (SRO) Ben Fields ripping a young African-American student from her desk and slamming her to the ground went viral, fueling another round of intense outrage at excessive use of force by government agents against African-American civilians. In South Carolina, where the incident took place, there were protests and counter-protests . Most major media outlets covered the affair, showing the video from multiple angles and debating whether to blame...
Blog Post
Improving California school environments focus of pilot program (edsource.org)
This week the departments of education in Orange and Butte counties, along with UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools, announced a pilot program to develop a training curriculum based on multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS), an approach to learning and behavioral problems in which students progress through a range of interventions depending on their need levels. The program, which is funded by a $15-million grant that was part of the budget deal struck by Gov. Jerry Brown and the...
Blog Post
Schools find one simple answer to attendance problem: washing machines (today.com)
Two school districts have found that the secret to raising attendance rates in schools in low-income areas could be as simple as providing laundry machines. "One of my students had just sort of withdrawn from school completely," Alison Guernsey, a seventh grade English teacher in Fairfield, California, told TODAY Parents. "After we started the program, he was more excited about coming, and he started to be actively engaged in class. He didn't feel like an outsider anymore," she said. At...
Blog Post
Setting the Wheels in Motion - Becoming a Trauma Informed and Trauma Sensitive School
I recently wrote a blog post about how to take the first step in creating a trauma informed care model (TIC) in your school. The first step, Establishing a Baseline, is necessary because it fuels future steps in the process. In the blog post "Is Your School Ready to be Trauma Informed and Trauma Sensitive," I also listed the key components of a TIC model. I am adding them here as well, because I don't want you to have to keep going back to the other blog as you are working on this process.
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
Teacher traveled statewide to capture the spark in California classrooms [EdSource.org]
David B. Cohen, a veteran English teacher at Palo Alto High and columnist for Education Week, spent a year crisscrossing California observing some of the state’s best teachers. The result was Capturing the Spark: Inspired Teachers, Thriving Schools, an insightful look at talented teachers, effective practices and promising schools, from Arcata to El Centro. Some interviewees were California Teachers of the Year or, like Cohen, have their national board certification, a distinguished...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
The Brain Science Is In: Students' Emotional Needs Matter (edweek.org)
Teachers, like parents, have always understood that children’s learning and growth do not occur in a vacuum, but instead at the messy intersection of academic, social, and emotional development. And they know that students’ learning is helped (or hindered) by the quality of students’ relationships and the contexts in which they live and learn. Working to weave those threads, skilled teachers often have yearned for schools—and policy approaches—that understand this complex reality. Such...
Blog Post
Mindfulness: How Helping Myself Allowed Me to Help my Students [HuffingtonPost.com]
This past year, I served as a co-principal of Tindley Preparatory Academy, an all-boys charter school in Indianapolis. If you have ever worked in a school you understand how boys can be. Also, anyone who has worked in a middle school understands how difficult middle school can be. Imagine having both middle school and boys. Oh, did I also mention that I was a first-year principal. There were a lot of stressful, anxious days until I found mindfulness. Then it was mindfulness that helped me...
Blog Post
New documentary examines at-risk youth in US schools [MarketPlace.org]
The new documentary "The One That Got Away" takes a look at the tough problem of dealing with at-risk youth in American schools. In the feature, Dan Gill, a teacher at Glenfield Middle School in Montclair, New Jersey, reconnects with his former student, Tourrie Moses. Moses is serving prison time for manslaughter and aggravated assault. One of the documentary's co-producers, Steve McCarthy, joined us to talk about the work. [For more of this story, written by David Brancaccio, go to ...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
Now available: recording of Chris Blodgett's talk on trauma-informed communities
Dr. Chris Blodgett spoke on Thursday, Nov 3rd at the Anchorage Loussac Library to a room of nearly 140 people and 60 more online. His talk "From ACEs to Action: How Communities Can Improve Well-Being and Resilience" was approximately two hours long. Access the webinar video, audio file, and slides here.
Blog Post
Black Minds Matter (teachingtolerance.org)
Black people, including youth, are less likely to receive adequate care for mental health issues for a number of reasons: disparities in access to care, stigma about mental illness and lack of culturally competent mental health practitioners. According to a study published in the International Journal of Health Services , black children are about half as likely as white children to get mental health treatment. As the CBC task force, mental health experts and policy makers mull over ideas to...
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
Can a nonprofit turn around a school in a juvenile detention facility? (hechingerreport.org)
New Orleans: As recently as a decade ago, the Youth Study Center would have been unlikely to attract an educational pioneer to their juvenile detention facility. The roughly 40 teenagers held in the flood-damaged center rarely made it to class because they were often on lockdown 23 hours a day. The staff had a reputation for incompetence. The building itself was plagued with bugs and mold. But this summer, the Orleans Parish School Board signed over operations of the school to the national...
Blog Post
‘Change in culture’: New California guidelines aim to help teach social, emotional skills [Press Democrat]
The nation’s schools long ago broadened their missions beyond the teaching of academic subjects and participation in extracurricular activities. Educators have for decades been entrusted to teach students a wider range of life skills, including those that touch on emotions, empathy and relationships with other people. Now, a new state guide , released Wednesday, offers a slew of resources for teachers and administrators seeking to bolster kids’ social and emotional development. “Science...
Blog Post
Chico school district using new approach to deal with behavioral issues [ChicoER.com]
Chico Unified School District is taking a different approach to behavioral problems in the classroom by training its staff to recognize students who have experienced trauma using the “trauma-informed” approach. In a traditional setting, if a student is acting out or not paying attention, a teacher might reprimand the student, or in some cases address them sharply, Chico Unified director of secondary education David McKay said. Using the trauma-informed approach, a teacher will...
Blog Post
Legislation Signals Growing Support for Significance of Trauma Indicators [CaliforniaHealthline.org]
As a college student, Rob Bonta had a summer job working as a counselor for troubled kids. Now, two decades later he is bringing legislation to address some of the needs he saw then. “I worked with some of these kids as a counselor out of college, and I’d walk them home and hear some of these stories,” Assembly member Bonta (D-Oakland) said. “Shootings they heard. Or shootings they witnessed the night before.” It was the summer of his junior year at Yale, when...
Blog Post
Making SEL More Relevant to Teens (edutopia.org)
Three social and emotional learning activities that are designed to address high school students’ need for status and respect. According to a 2018 survey , current and recent high school students don’t believe their schools have done enough to help them develop socially and emotionally, and most graduates don’t feel prepared for life after high school. Researcher David Yeager and his colleagues argue that it’s important to address teens’ need for status (“How do others treat me?”) and...
Blog Post
Many of NYC’s bilingual special education students don’t get the right services. Remote learning has made it even harder. [ny.chalkbeat.org]
By Reema Amin, Chalkbeat New York, April 30, 2020 After years of searching in vain for the right school for her son, Erendira Matamoros was hopeful she found a good fit. David, a 14-year-old who is autistic and primarily speaks Spanish, is legally entitled to a small special education classroom led by a bilingual teacher, but that’s hard to come by in New York City. Only about a third of the roughly 5,500 students who required small bilingual special education classrooms this fall were...
Blog Post
The rise of restorative justice in California schools brings promise, controversy [EdSource.org]
The two 9th-grade girls heard the laughing the minute they walked into their third-period class that December morning at Oakland’s Fremont High School. And they knew why: a video of one of the girls being slapped by a classmate had gone viral among students on social media. It was one of those moments that could have gone bad in a hurry — like so many others had at Fremont High, a school that had more suspensions last year than any other in the Oakland Unified School District. Both girls...
Blog Post
Report: Teachers Have Difficulty Engaging Families (thejournal.com)
In a recent survey involving 1,000 primary teachers conducted by ed tech company ClassTag , 45 percent of respondents said more than a quarter of families were “hard to reach and engage,” with 21 percent saying that more than half of their families were hard to engage. However, according to the report, The State of Parent Engagement , parents tend to think that teachers do a good job of communicating. Some 39 percent rated teachers as having good communication, rating them at 9 to 10 points...
Blog Post
Resource list -- Practices & Frameworks
All of these practices and frameworks are -- or should be -- informed by the new knowledge about the unified science of human development, aka ACEs writ large, or NEAR science. This encompasses the epidemiology of adverse childhood experiences (ACE studies), the neurobiology of toxic stress, the biomedical and epigenetic consequences of toxic stress, and resilience research. Frameworks and Models Attachment, Self-Regulation and Competency (ARC) Source: The Trauma Center at the...
Blog Post
Rural California school district with high suspension rates under state investigation [edsource.org]
by David Washburn, EdSource, June 11, 2019. Butte County’s Oroville City Elementary School District, which has a suspension rate that is three times the statewide average, is under state investigation for its discipline policies and practices. The investigation, by the California Bureau of Children’s Justice , is focused on the district’s record of suspending and expelling students and its alternatives to those punishments, according to a district statement . The statement also said the...
Blog Post
School Discipline Linked to Later Consequences
Published in Usable Knowledge from Harvard Graduate School of Education RESEARCH STORIES School Discipline Linked to Later Consequences Study finds clear and long-lasting negative effects for students attending high-suspension schools — particularly minority boys BY: Emily Boudreau POSTED: September 16, 2019 Since the emergence of zero tolerance discipline policies in the 1990s, schools have increasingly been relying on suspensions as a behavioral management tactic. However, these policies...
Blog Post
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.
Blog Post
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...
Blog Post
Washington, DC, City Council Education Committee probes how trauma-informed schools can help students
Two-and-a-half years ago, a school administrator confronted District of Columbia Councilmember David Grosso with a stark and surprising reality when he visited the Walker-Jones Education Campus to learn about a literacy intervention program. At the...
Blog Post
Wellness and Resiliency Toolkit for Kids with Trauma
I'm excited to share a booklet created for youth in Oregon foster care at a Wellness camp this summer. Youth were provided with these quick, easy and effective (and evidence based) "Mindful Moments" exercises in their Wellness Toolkits and they were practiced throughout the day at camp so that they could be remembered in times of stress and dysregulation. The exercised are designed to quickly bring them back to a state of calm. The youth really enjoyed them, and found them easy and...
Blog Post
What Is Hip-Hop-Based Education Doing in Nice Fields Such as Early Childhood and Elementary Education?
Join us in Atlanta, GA on Feb 8 & 9th at our teachers conference "Discipline that Works!" Hear Dr. Bettina Love talk about Hip hop, grit, and academic success! Through Hip Hop, students embody the characteristics of grit, social and emotional intelligence, and the act improvisation- all of which are proven to be predictors for academic success! So how do we harness these skills to promote and nurture academic success?
Blog Post
What Lies Beneath Behavior? Introducing Echo's New Infographic!
Every novelist, psychologist, anthropologist and your Aunt Jane have wanted to know this. What motivates people and what’s going on when their behavior is irritating or just plain doesn’t make sense? At Echo, we encourage adults to look beneath the behavior of children and to understand ‘behavior as communication.’ It may be that the child is choosing a way of communicating that is hard for you to deal with but that doesn’t diminish the fact that the behavior is driven by some deep need or...
Blog Post
What will it take to place relationships at the center of schools [thehill.com]
A recently released report from the Aspen Institute’s National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development provides a roadmap for putting relationships at the center of education. While the concept is widely accepted, the question is: Do we have the will to make a relationships-first approach real in every school across the country? This approach is important for every student, and it is especially urgent for students facing the most adversity and instability. Brain science on...