Tagged With "well child visits"
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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...
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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...
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10 Ways Parents and Schools Can Prevent School Shootings Now (Op-Ed) (livescience.com)
As a parent, I understand the desire for practical responses to school shootings. I also absolutely believe the government should do more to prevent such incidents. But the gun control debate has proven so divisive and ineffective that I am weary of waiting for politicians to act. I study the kind of aggressive childhood behavior that often predates school shootings. That research suggests what communities and families can start doing today to better protect children. Here are 10 actions we...
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1st Annual Nat'l Conference for Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools: Call for Workshop Proposals
Deadline: Nov. 1, 2017 The Attachment & Trauma Network, Inc. (ATN) is hosting this National Conference for Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools at the Washington Hilton Washington, DC, February 19-20, 2018, to give all educators — teachers, administrators and school personnel — as well as other child-serving professionals, community leaders and parents an opportunity to explore the importance of trauma-informed care for in schools and other child-serving environments. Through the ACE...
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200 Students, Parents & Educators Spent Two Years Thinking About How to Support the Whole Child. Here Are 6 Things They Found [the74million.org]
F or Duke University sophomore Mila de Souza, including social-emotional learning in schools should be common sense. By that, she means it should be second nature for schools to support students’ mental health, teach children how to work well with others, and become a place where both educators and scholars can learn to value one another’s diverse experiences. “I feel a lot of schools are focusing on just education and making sure these students are able to pass tests, but not really...
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2017 Children's Mental Health Report
Of the 74.5 million children in the United States, an estimated 17.1 million have or have had a mental health disorder — more than the number of children with cancer, diabetes and AIDS combined. Half of all mental illness occurs before the age of 14, and 75 percent by the age of 24. In spite of the magnitude of the problem, lack of awareness and entrenched stigma keep the majority of these young people from getting help. Children and adolescents struggling with these disorders are at risk...
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43 Amazing Benefits of Child-led Free Play
Self-directed free play is vital for the healthy development of children. Here we see 43 science-backed benefits it brings.
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6 Problems with our School System (Next School)
The traditional system of education was designed in the industrial age and is now outdated and ineffective. Learn about the 6 major problems with the system. At NEXT School, we are bringing a much needed upgrade to the education system to address these problems. We are India's 1st Big Picture School. The highly innovative Big Picture Learning framework allows us to personalise each child's educational journey making learning more engaging and relevant. Visit www.nextschool.org to know more.
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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
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A Community Approach to Trauma Sensitivity / Making a Difference Conference in MA in November
The 6th Annual Making a Difference Conference for SESPs, Foster/Adoptive and Kinship Caregivers and their Professional Partners will be held in Marlborough, MA on November 14, 2017. The theme is A Community Approach to Trauma Sensitivity. There will be at least two talks will be about ACEs! Speakers/Topics: Keynote: Managing the Hearts and Souls of Many, Dana Royster-Buefort, M.Ed., C.A.G.S. Workshops Tackling ACEs by Building Resilient Communities , Renee D Boynton-Jarrett, MD, ScD . Note:...
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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...
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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]...
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A New Program Helps Foster Kids in Orange County Avoid Homelessness when They Age Out of Public Care [ocregister.com]
By Theresa Walker, The Orange County Register, December 20, 2019 For three years after he aged out of foster care, at age 18, Christian was homeless. During that time, he was hit by a car and suffered a traumatic brain injury. He was in a coma for six months and his speech and memory were affected. Over most of the last year he’s lived at The Link, a homeless shelter in Santa Ana. This week, Christian, now 22, moved into his own one-bedroom apartment, in Tustin. That change is the result of...
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A School That Provides The One Constant In Homeless Children's Lives (npr.org)
Positive Tomorrows is a small, privately funded school in the heart of Oklahoma City, designed to meet the needs of homeless children. The future of these students hinges on the one constant in their lives: the school, which addresses both education and basic needs. The educational challenges associated with homelessness are broad and extend to every corner of a child's life. Without consistent access to adequate food, shelter and safety, students are often too hungry, tired and stressed to...
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A Systems Approach to Integrating Health in Education [RWJF.org]
A systems approach is needed to better align the health and education sectors in order to address the needs of the whole child. The Issue Students who are healthy, present, and engaged learn better. At the same time, those with more education tend to live longer, healthier, and more productive lives. In short, the relationship between health and education is reciprocal: higher education has been found to improve health, and better health supports learning. But despite these connections the...
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A Town Helps Transform Its School (edutopia.org)
For years, residents in the small, rural community of Pittsfield, New Hampshire, fretted over the state of Pittsfield Middle High School, their only middle and high school. Ranked the fifth-lowest-performing high school in New Hampshire, the 300-student school struggled with attendance, discipline, and general student disengagement. Problems deepened when the neighboring town of Barnstead stopped sending kids to the school, resulting in a 40 percent drop in enrollment and a funding cut from...
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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.
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A Traumatic Failure: DC public schools neglect mental health [centerforhealthjournalism.org]
This series was produced as part of the University of Southern California Center for Health Journalism Fellowship with a grant from the Fund for Journalism on Child Well-Being. Other stories in this series include: The Cost of Juvenile Trauma HillRag Wednesday, January 9, 2019 “I have to meet this guy and have sex with him. If I don’t, then he and his friends are going to rape my little sister,” a student at Frank Ballou High School in Ward 8’s Congress Heights told her teacher. The teacher...
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A Week in the Life of a School Social Worker [psychotherapynetworker.org]
Public School 48, where I’m on staff as a social worker, sits on a block between a juvenile detention center and a strip club. The school serves around 900 mostly Hispanic and African American children in prekindergarten through fifth grade, with a large percentage of those kids living in shelter apartments. Of course, PS 48 has an educational mission, not a clinical one, but I’m part of a service staff that includes speech, occupational, and physical therapists. I’ve been a school social...
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A "When the Nickel Dropped" Story - Sometimes It's Something So Small
My daughter, Candace, taught 5th then 3rd grade at an inner city Baltimore elementary school through Teach For America. It was trial by fire her first year, as this was a struggling school and many students had a trauma history. It is Teach For America’s mission to place teachers in the most needy schools. Candace was very enthusiastic, but didn’t know much about trauma and its effects, other than what she intuitively felt - which was impressively a lot. So it was very timely that I was...
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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...
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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,...
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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...
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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...
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ACES: Educators Present on Child Abuse: South Boston Online
Jeannette Fodness, Meg Rieley and I went to Boston to present at the ASCD conference--a large (@ 7000 I believe) conference for educators and administrators. The conversations were diverse and the interest in ACEs varied as did the knowledge level. Fortunately, a reporter from South Boston Online chose our learning lab to attend and here is what he had to say: http://www.southbostononline.com/aces-educators-present-on-child-abuse-2/ P.S. He got our titles a little mixed up, but the ideas are...
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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...
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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...
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Addressing Adverse Childhood Experiences in School (ascd.org)
Of the roughly 74 million children in the United States, just under 51 million are preK–12 public school students. Every day, 13 million of these children go hungry. A report of child abuse is made every ten seconds . And 2.7 million have a parent in prison. Our children are living in a state of emergency. How can we, as educators, expect them to learn when they are living in a constant state of fight or flight? Even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente...
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Advancing Systemic Changes to Promote Healthy School Environments [RWJF.org]
Purpose RWJF seeks to advance systemic changes that embed health in school environments. To help advance these systemic changes, the Foundation will support a collaborative, multipronged strategy with three complementary areas of work related to Research, Policy, and Strategic Action. This Call for Qualifications (CFQ) represents Phase I of a two-phase selection process designed to identify eligible organizations to lead each area of work, which include: Applied Research and Translation (one...
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Afterschool programs and a trauma-informed approach [Afterschool Alliance]
“A trauma-informed, culturally responsive lens must be a part of everything we do.” This statement by Laura Norton-Cruz, Director of the Alaska Resilience Initiative, sums up the key message of last week’s Senate Afterschool Caucus briefing for Congressional staff which focused on “Afterschool Programs and a Trauma-Informed Approach.” On Wednesday, Sept. 11, the Senate Afterschool Caucus* — in partnership with the Afterschool Alliance, Alaska Children’s Trust – Alaska Afterschool Network,...
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AG Kamala D. Harris Seeks to Better Serve Foster Youth (sdvoice.info)
Attorney General Kamala D. Harris Issues New Guidelines to Encourage Secure Sharing of Information Between Schools and Child Welfare Agencies to Better Serve Foster Youth Attorney General Kamala D. Harris today announced that the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Children’s Justice (BCJ), the California Department of Education (CDE), and the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) have jointly developed statewide guidelines for school districts, county offices of...
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Aiming for Discipline Instead of Punishment (edutopia.org)
There are many perspectives on the topic of discipline in our classrooms and schools, and I’d like to explore the idea of using brain-aligned discipline with students who have adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Discipline, unlike punishment, is proactive and begins before there are problems. It means seeing conflict as an opportunity to problem solve. Discipline provides guidance, focuses on prevention, enhances communication, models respect, and embraces natural consequences. It teaches...
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‘Ambassadors of Hope’ Trauma-sensitive schools understand the whole child [DerbyInformer.com]
Kindergarten teacher Erica Nunemaker ripped down the clip chart she used for behavior management in her classroom. Children moved their clip up for good behavior and down for bad behavior. Nunemaker realized the same students were moving down every day. The clip was a public display of the student’s failure, and children weren’t learning how to fix their behavior. “I’ve noticed that a lot of times we discipline them and tell them that’s not right ... but then we don’t give them a solution to...
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An Evidence-Based Indictment of Inaction
If schools are to be guided by data, the data says more than 2 of 3 children experience at least one ACE: children of all incomes, all colors, all social levels, all educational levels. It is all of us. Is your school trauma-informed?
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An Evidence-Based Indictment of Inaction
If schools are to be guided by data, the data says that 2 of 3 children experience at least one adverse childhood experience (ACE): children of all incomes, all colors, all social levels, all educational levels. It is all of us. Is your school trauma-informed?
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An Inside Look at Attachment and Trauma
"Thanks to Janyne’s transparent telling of her own story, the complex concept of dissociation can be understood without needing a psychology degree.” MELISSA SADIN, Exec. Director of Ducks & Lions, Program Director of ATN Creating Trauma Sensitive Schools, Author of Teachers Guide to Trauma
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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...
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An Invitation to Co-Create Change and Shift Your Mindset
We are not born “normal” or “disordered” or with a “disability” we “are born” and “we develop” in many different ways. Along our path of development we will encounter various influences and each individual will respond to those experiences differently. The brain actually continues to develop well into adulthood!
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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...
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As a teacher, I used to give tons of homework. Here's why I regret it. (upworthy.com)
There are many aspects of my more than decade-long career as a teacher that I'm proud of. My reputation for giving lots of homework is not one of them. When I entered a doctoral program in education policy, I learned about the research that suggests that homework is not good for young kids. Not only does it fail to improve the academic performance of elementary students, but it might actually be damaging to kids' attitudes toward school and to their physical health . What are some of the...
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ATN's First Trauma-Sensitive Schools Training a Success
June 2016. ATN’s Trauma-Sensitive Schools (TSS) Initiative hosted our first Professional Development Training June 27 & 28 in Somerville, NJ. The Superintendent of Somerville Schools, Dr. Tim Purnell was the keynote and spoke on the importance of viewing things through a different lens. Then ATN’s TSS trainers Melissa Sadin and Jen Alexander provided a full day of training to enable educators to realize the impact of early childhood trauma; recognize traumatized children in their...
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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...
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Oakland Unified to fund Restorative Justice with "at least" $2.3 million!
I'm not sure if this has already made the rounds, but it's such good news, it's definitely worth a repost! "Oakland Unified school board voted unanimously Wednesday night to eliminate willful defiance as a reason to suspend any student and to invest at least $2.3 million to expand restorative justice practices in its schools". What a beautiful commitment to the child, to meeting their actual needs rather than just sending them away with their needs unmet. The funding of RJ practices is huge,...
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Oklahoma City has fair share of homeless students [newsok.com]
A mom walked her child in to school at an Oklahoma City Public School last week and the child candidly shared that they'd slept in their car and that is why he was late. This isn't a made for television movie or something that only happens in other cities ... this really happened and happens quite often in our schools. More than 3,000 Oklahoma City Public Schools students identified as homeless last year. Homelessness causes children to be tardy, absent, hungry and suffering from anxiety and...
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On Demand Webinar: Dr. Stephanie Covington Becoming Trauma Informed: A Key to School Safety
https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/1812951/8AC98B3B7964F5E9E4BAEFBAABA98D43 With the increased awareness of the impact of trauma on people’s lives, school professionals are beginning to consider what this means in their specific settings. There is a growing evidence-base documenting the impact of child neglect and abuse (as well as other forms of trauma) on the health, mental health, and behavior of children and adults. There is a growing realization that students across the nation are coming to...
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On Demand Webinar: Dr. Stephanie Covington Becoming Trauma Informed: A Key to School Safety
https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/1812951/8AC98B3B7964F5E9E4BAEFBAABA98D43 With the increased awareness of the impact of trauma on people’s lives, school professionals are beginning to consider what this means in their specific settings. There is a growing evidence-base documenting the impact of child neglect and abuse (as well as other forms of trauma) on the health, mental health, and behavior of children and adults. There is a growing realization that students across the nation are coming to...
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One California charter school's struggle for approval and a building close to its parents (edsource.org)
The clock ran out for Promise Academy in its extended battle with San Jose Unified to open a charter school this fall — a delay that reflects escalating tensions between school districts and charter school organizations in California. Over the past year, Promise won two lawsuits involving the district. It obtained a charter from the State Board of Education in January on its second and final level of appeal after the San Jose Unified school board rejected its charter application for a...
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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...
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Ordinary Magic-Resiliency Research - The Power of Connection
Resilience and Positive Psychology The message from three decades of research on resilience underscores central themes of the positive psychology movement (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000; Snyder & Lopez, in press). Psychology has neglected important phenomena in human adaptation and development during periods of focus on risk, problems, pathology, and treatment. Attention to human capabilities and adaptive systems that promote healthy development and functioning have the potential...