Hello to all my Education TIC/ACE gurus! I've been trying to play catch up with the chat you had last week regarding ACES in education (I was in my grad school class). Some of what you've said really resonated with me here in Montgomery County, Maryland (one of the 15th largest public school systems in the US). We have a reputation from the past as being top-notch and there are MANY highly educated, professional and technical parents who are engaged. However, we have a VERY LARGE and growing FARMS population, and will see that continue to grow. Our achievement gap is growing ever wider. Many parents (especially those on the low and high end of the socio-economic scale) are unengaged, overworked, stressed out, disconnected, or were themselves the product of high ACE score family systems (genograms are also a terrific way to tie ACE scores to family trauma history).
After reading through your live chat session, I reached out to one of our MCPS Board Members (she's highly emotionally intelligent and relatively new on the Board, so she doesn't carry the baggage and negative mindset of some other Board members). I asked her if she'd like to talk about trauma-informed or sensitive classroom practices that would help unregulated kids who come from traumatized homes (both high functioning AND low functioning). I've just been officially asked to meet with her, another MCPS Board member AND the Student Member of the Board! I want to schedule a meeting soon on this -- they see this problem and want to address it.
Please point me towards ALL relevant info on this so I can print it out, share it, talk about it with them during our meeting. I want to be a resource - and a valuable one because I want to see this in action in our schools! Too many teachers and administrators punish kids because of the acting out due to trauma at home/in their lives. This needs to stop in order to provide a safe, secure learning environment in schools (NOTE: my two children who are now in middle school, attend this school system!!!).
My personal email address is brenda@usermail.com OR you can use my Johns Hopkins University email address (I'm a graduate student in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program), second year and working to find placement for next semester, at bgregor6@jhu.edu.
And I thank you in advance...and I have to say I SO miss being able to fully immerse myself in Acesconnection.com -- while in graduate school, my focus has changed, but my love for this topic and this work has NOT! I hope to open eyes here in my idyllic, rich, somewhat narcissistic county!
Thank you, Brenda Gregory Yuen
P.S. I LOVED the education chat session and want to see more - would be THRILLED if it moved to Twitter to reach the larger mass -- and want to be part of the next one, IF it doesn't interfere with my grad courses.
