Tagged With "student wellness"
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Concrete Strategies if Schools/Colleges Close and/or Go Online
Here is my just released article with 10 concrete suggestions that can be deployed immediately. They can be adapted for PreK- 12 schools and workplaces; they are designed for colleges/universities but easily transported. These are all trauma-responsive and critically important in my view. I noted with a smile that the ACE Connection folks are already using some of these in their own organization. Feel free to circulate the 10 suggestions as a separate document (with attribution as to where...
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Doctor-patient role-playing featured in ACEs Connection webinar
On an ACEs Connection webinar on Monday, Dr. Andrew Seaman, an assistant professor at Oregon Health & Science University, showed how he navigates his students through the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). And, in an unusual twist for a webinar, Seaman and O’Nesha Cochran, a peer mentor with the Mental Health Association of Oregon, role-played doctor-patient interactions to show how to develop the skills to communicate with patients with high ACE scores. About 90 people...
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Doctor-patient role-playing featured in ACEs Connection webinar
On an ACEs Connection webinar on Monday, Dr. Andrew Seaman, an assistant professor at Oregon Health & Science University, showed how he navigates his students through the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). And, in an unusual twist for a webinar, Seaman and O’Nesha Cochran, a peer mentor with the Mental Health Association of Oregon, role-played doctor-patient interactions to show how to develop the skills to communicate with patients with high ACE scores. About 90 people...
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Experts Worry Active Shooter Drills in Schools Could be Traumatic for Students [npr.org]
By Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Sophia Alvarez-Boyd, and James Doubek, National Public Radio, November 10, 2019 A regular drumbeat of mass shootings in the U.S., both inside schools and out, has ramped up pressure on education and law enforcement officials to do all they can to prevent the next attack. Close to all public schools in the U.S. conducted some kind of lockdown drill in 2015-2016, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Last year, 57% of teens told researchers they...
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Fires Take a Toll on Students; Some Districts Rethink Suspensions (Podcast) [edsource.org]
By EdSource, November 4, 2019 From Sonoma County to Simi Valley, fires forced hundreds of thousands of Californians out of their homes in October. In this week’s podcast, reporter Sydney Johnson shares what she found at evacuation centers in Santa Rosa and Petaluma, where she spoke with college students worried about how they will make up lost time. Also, with a big decline in out-of-school suspensions for disruptive behavior, some districts are looking at ways to transform how they handle...
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For Many College Students, Hunger Can ‘Make It Hard To Focus In Class’ (californiahealthline.org)
As students enter college this fall, many will hunger for more than knowledge. Up to half of college students report that they were either not getting enough to eat or were worried about it, according to published studies . “Food insecurity,” as it’s called, is most prevalent at community colleges, but it’s common at public and private four-year schools as well. Student activists and advocates in the education community have drawn attention to the problem in recent years, and the food...
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For Students and Community
I propose to review basic ACEs and Trauma Informed responses literature so that adults can understand how ACEs affect them and how they can become part of the solution.
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From public housing to college: new national pilot helps low-income students in LA make that journey [edsource.org]
The distance from the Avalon Gardens public housing development in South Central Los Angeles to elite Smith College in western Massachusetts should be measured in more than the 2,900 miles separating them. The housing project near Watts is a cluster of nearly identical pale orange one- and two-story buildings surrounded by a high metal gate installed to keep gangs out. It is home to about 440 low-income, mainly Latino and black, residents whose scramble for economic survival is eased by...
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Georgia Health Students Plan Trauma Informed Care Training Day, Oct. 19, 2019
Home to the Center for Disease Control, Atlanta is a city full of great minds focused on all issues related to public health. Despite this, a group of students and faculty at neighboring health professional schools including Emory School of Medicine, Emory’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, Georgia State University, Morehouse School of Medicine, Mercer University School of Medicine, and the Medical College of Georgia at August University, found that education and awareness around one...
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Help NM become a leader in child well-being [Albuquerque Journal]
Our state is poised to take a vital leadership role. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) have been part of a national dialogue for over 20 years, since Kaiser Permanente and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted their ground-breaking study in the 1990s. While this public awareness has been important to our understanding of the social and economic consequences of ACEs, and we are making great strides in responses to the crisis, we still have yet to translate that effort...
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High School Suspensions, Multiple Schools Affect Foster Youth as They Enter College [edsource.org]
By Ashley A. Smith, EdSource, January 30, 2020 California foster students who were suspended from school or attended multiple high schools are more likely to struggle in college, according to a new report that examines the academic transition these students undergo. The report released Wednesday, from Educational Results Partnership, a nonprofit research organization, and California College Pathways, a statewide organization that helps foster youth succeed in college, finds these students...
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How Free Food Programs at MJC, Stan State are Coming to Rescue of Hungry Students [modbee.com]
By Chrisanna Mink, The Modesto Bee, January 4, 2020 Nancy Carranza, a third-year student at Modesto Junior College, is happy to give back to hungry families. She knows first-hand what it feels like to study with the distraction of a growling stomach. “Sometimes my mom skipped (meals),” Carranza said tearfully. “My mom planned out the month and made things work with food stamps.” [ Please click here to read more .]
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How Louisiana's Richest Students Go To College on the Backs of the Poor [hechingerreport.org]
By Emmanuel Felton, The Hechinger Report, October 30, 2019 Rodney Woods was on the fence about applying to Nicholls State University, a four-year public institution a 20-minute walk from his mother’s house in Louisiana’s Bayou Region, a rural area of the state dotted with sugar cane fields and mud-colored swamps. He had been on campus a few times. Both he and his mother loved to practice their photography skills among the long-slung red-brick buildings clustered around the school’s tidy...
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How One Minnesota University More Than Doubled its Native Student Graduation Rate [hechingerreport.org]
By Caroline Preston, The Hechinger Report, February 6, 2020 Charles Golding looked for two things when he was researching colleges: a top economics program and a connection to his native culture. A Google search led him to the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, a state flagship school with prize-winning economists and a history of indigenous activism. The university’s Department of American Indian Studies, founded in 1969, is the oldest such program in the country, and it’s located in the...
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How Universities Deal With Sexual Harassment Needs Sweeping Change, Panel Says [nytimes.com]
Years of efforts to prevent sexual harassment in science, engineering and medicine have failed, and universities need to make sweeping changes in the way they deal with the issue, a searing new report by a national advisory panel concluded on Tuesday. “There is no evidence to suggest that current policies, procedures, and approaches have resulted in a significant reduction in sexual harassment,” said the report, which was more than two years in the making , starting well before the #MeToo...
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If You Feel Thankful, Write It Down. It's Good For Your Health (npr.org)
"I think just over the last few years there's been more of a trend to focus on gratitude," says psychologist Laurie Santos , who teaches a course on the science of well-being and happiness at Yale. Gratitude is being endorsed by wellness blogs and magazines . You can buy different kinds of specific gratitude journals, or download apps that remind you to jot down your blessings. And noting your gratitude seems to pay off: There's a growing body of research on the benefits of gratitude.
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In College, Former Foster Kids Pay it Forward [nationswell.com]
Bria Davis didn’t have the easiest time growing up. Her mother suffered from schizophrenia and her father wasn’t around. As a result, she was placed into the foster-care system, which meant changing schools every year. “Coming out of high school, I never was in a stable place,” Davis says. Davis’ freshman year at Miami Dade College in Florida was challenging, and she eventually sought help. Now a well-acclimated sophomore, Davis decided she was in a unique position to give back. So she...
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In School Suspensions the Answer to School Discipline? Not Necessarily, Experts Say [edsource.org]
By Carolyn Jones, EdSource, October 29, 2019 More California schools are allowing disruptive students to serve suspensions on campus instead of sending them home. But experts said educators need to provide those students with high-quality behavior counseling for that approach to be successful. Schools throughout the state have embraced in-school suspensions in recent years, as studies have shown that traditional out-of-school suspensions can hurt students’ academic performance and actually...
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Introducing NEW Becoming Trauma-Informed & Beyond Community
Earlier this year @Dawn Daum wrote to us when she was ready to share ACEs science with people in the organization she works in to make a case for moving towards more trauma-informed care for the benefit of the staff and those they serve. She was frustrated because almost all the training and resources she found were geared towards schools, clinical staff or to organizations working with children and families rather than ACE-impacted adults in the workplace and who are...
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Is your school a buffer zone against toxic stress?
The challenge of the fast pace and the strain of living in the 21 st century is the chronic stress of keeping up with volume of information, expectations and adverse experiences that leads to stressors of daily living. Adults have become good at adjusting to and compartmentalizing these stressors. Children and adolescents however are struggling to keep up and are in fact caving under the weight of the stresses. In addition, many children lack adequate nurturing and supports needed to give...
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JED Foundation and UMass offer new guide: College to Career: Supporting Mental Health
"Investigators from The Jed Foundation (JED) and the University of Massachusetts Medical School examined the literature in education, business, psychology and sociology regarding the college-to-career transition. Knowledge gained informed a national survey of 1,929 college seniors, recent graduates and employers exploring specific challenges to the transition, as well as existing strategies to support young adults and their emotional health. Data from the literature review and the survey...
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NJ medical school program requires all first-year students to learn about ACEs science
In 2015, Dr. Beth Pletcher, a pediatrician and associate professor specializing in genetics, was at the annual conference of the American Academy of Pediatrics in Washington D.C. when she heard two speakers that forever changed her work with medical students. Dr. Beth Pletcher “I went to two talks on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) that were so mind-boggling to me that I decided on my drive back to New Jersey that I had to do something about it,”says Pletcher, director of the Division...
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Only 3 States Have a Gay-Straight Alliance in More Than Half of Their High Schools [childtrends.org]
By Dominique Parris and Brandon Stratford, Child Trends, November 5, 2019 In 45 states and the District of Columbia, less than half of all high schools report having a gay-straight alliance (also known as a genders and sexualities alliance, or GSA), according to 2016 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among the 48 states (as well as the District of Columbia) that provide data, only three states (New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts) can claim that more than half of...
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Our Students: The Reality
This is an excerpt from Breakaway Learners appearing in Evolllution ,and it deals with ACEs. I think the chapter in particular and the book more generally will be of interest to you all. Comments and thoughts are welcome as always. https://evolllution.com/attracting-students/todays_learner/who-are-our-students-now-and-into-the-future/
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Parent Handouts updated and available In Dari, English & Spanish
The updated parent handouts are now available in Spanish as well as English and Dari. Here's the blog post with links to all three versions of each flyer. All versions of the Understanding ACEs and Parenting to Prevent & Heal ACEs parent handouts can be downloaded, distributed, and used freely. Both flyers were made with generous support from Family Hui, a Program of Lead for Tomorrow, who is responsible for making the Spanish and Dari translations available. These are updates of the...
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Peace4Tarpon and U.F. Make it Real Part 2
Peace4Tarpon has worked with University of Florida for several years now - specifically with the School of Public Health and Dr. Mark Hart's class on Public Health Communication. The subject of his Public Health Communications Master's level class for the past two semesters was Peace4Tarpon. He gave his students a chance to create marketing materials that would actually be implemented - a far cry from creating campaigns that might never see the light of day. We actually used the materials...
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Ph.D. Students Face Mental Health Challenges
Science By Elisabeth Pain Approximately one-third of Ph.D. students are at risk of having or developing a common psychiatric disorder like depression, a recent study reports. Although these results come from a small sample—3659 students at universities in Flanders, Belgium, 90% of whom were studying the sciences and social sciences—they are nonetheless an important addition to the growing literature about the prevalence of mental health issues in academia . One key message for scientific...
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Press Release — New Survey of California Community College Students Reveals More than Half Face Food Insecurity and Nearly 20 Percent Have Faced Homelessness [California Community Colleges]
Press Release — New Survey of California Community College Students Reveals More than Half Face Food Insecurity and Nearly 20 Percent Have Faced Homelessness March 7, 2019 Sacramento — More than half the students attending a California community college have trouble affording balanced meals or worry about running out of food, and nearly 1 in 5 are either homeless or do not have a stable place to live, according to a survey released today. Click HERE to read the press release and click HERE...
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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...
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Reminder: Free Webinar on How to Create Trauma Responsive Educational Institutions
Title : How to Create Trauma Responsive Institutions and Why it Matters Date : Friday, January 31, 2020, 1-2:30pmET Description : We live in a world of increasing trauma, whether created by nature (fires, floods, earthquakes) or by individuals (shootings, suicides, family dysfunction, addictions). We carry our trauma with us and many students in college, arguably one in two, has experienced trauma in their lives and will display trauma symptomology moving forward. Trauma symptomology affects...
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Research Roundup: Looking at ACEs in vet students, college students, and the elderly
This is the extended ACEs Pyramid developed by RYSE in Richmond, CA. Here's an article about it . ____________________________________________ In a study of more than 1,000 veterinary students across six schools, 61% had at least one ACE, and those with four or more ACEs were three times more likely to be depressed. Among nearly 3,000 college students, ACEs were associated with increased odds of drug use in the previous 30 days. And In a group of women and men in Ireland aged 50-69, a higher...
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Resilient College Students
As a person with an ACE score of 9, I look back on the years that I did not function "normally." My freshman year of college . I could only imagine what life was like for the students that I saw a regular basis. My fabulous Intern from North Carolina Central University (NCCU) and my awesome CollegeTRY facilitator surveyed students about their level of RESILIENCE. They developed a forum with the assistance of the NCCU Department of Pubic Health Education. Resilient NCCU Video Achieving Health...
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Resource List - Trauma Informed Approaches and Autism Spectrum and Other Developmental Disabilities
Resources for individuals, organizations, and communities moving along trauma and hope-informed pathways in order to: Prevent and mitigate adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Promote resilience and safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments. Promote equity and racial justice. Prevent substance abuse and promote mental health. … so that all children, youth, families and communities have equal opportunity for educational success, economic stability, health, and well-being.
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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...
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State profiles of ACEs initiatives debut! Use them as a new community building tool to accelerate your progress
Profiles of statewide and major local ACEs initiatives in the 50 states and the District of Columbia are now available from ACEs Connection. You’ll learn about other states and maybe even a few things about your own. This series is just the start of curating highlights of the most significant initiatives across the country. The next iteration will provide even more details. How to use this series: The invaluable information many of you provided to our ACEs Connection team on what is...
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Supporting students when teaching remotely (CU Boulder Today)
By Kirk Ambrose, April 6, 2020, CU Boulder Today The past few weeks have been stressful and disruptive for everyone. Our students are especially vulnerable as they may be facing any number of challenges, such as financial stress, housing and food insecurity, and additional demands related to caring for family members and themselves. What is more, some students may be in a different time zone, need to miss regularly scheduled class meetings because of unforeseen demands, have to find...
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The College Mental Health Crisis in 10 Sketches (yesmagazine.org)
As schools respond to the 30 percent increase in demand for counseling, artist Ella Baron gives a glimpse inside some students’ experiences. Illustrator Ella Baron conducted a series of interviews with college students, many who had suspended their studies because of mental health concerns, to create a series of sketches about the mental health crisis at colleges, listening to the recordings as she drew. The images, published in June 2017 in The Guardian, are as pointed as they are...
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The Deepest Well reflections
My very first experience with ACEs came from watching Nadine Burke Harris’ Ted talk (Burke Harris, How trauma affects health across a lifetime, 2014). I’ve just read her book The Deepest Well (Burke Harris, 2018) and it is obvious to me how much she said in her Ted talk that I did not fully understand. Her book is an example of how a prepared mind gets prepared for learning something new. It is a narrative organized sequentially in time. It starts well before she encountered ACEs and shows...
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The Healing Place Podcast - Dr. Kristina Brinkerhoff: Educational Consultant
Dr. Kristina Brinkerhoff, a consultant, keynote speaker, presenter and trainer, leverages over 20 years of experience as a teacher, principal, superintendent and adoptive mom of five foster children, to help educators gain an understanding of the effects Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), and the importance of trauma informed practice in schools.
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The long-term cost of college? For blacks and Hispanics, it’s not just about money (heraldsun.com)
College might be a ticket out of poverty, but for blacks and Hispanics making the climb, it might not be a ticket to good physical health, UNC-Chapel Hill researchers say. In fact, yardsticks like blood pressure and blood chemistry indicate students who start from “higher levels of disadvantage” may “actually experience a cost” to their future health from the stress surrounding the experience, a team led by post-doc Lauren Gaydosh and sociology professor Kathleen Mullan Harris said in a...
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The University of California Stands Out Among Top Schools When It Comes to Serving Poor Students [theatlantic.com]
The idea is clear, simple, and generally agreed upon: Colleges need to do more when it comes to enrolling and graduating low-income students. If college degrees are “the great equalizer”—though some research has disputed that characterization—then expanding access to those degrees will help make society more equal. Are any colleges succeeding in doing that? A new report from Third Way, a center-left think tank, tries to answer that question—and the results for many colleges are not pretty .
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Toxic Schools Worsening Toxic Stress: The Destructive Reign of Universal Standards, Pathology, Medication and Behaviorism
This post is the first chapter of a book. The names HAVE NOT been changed, as each individual profoundly impacted the author's growth and development. She wants their identities to remain intact. I did not realize that my first years in public education would profoundly shape my trauma-informed journey and what I would do nearly twenty years later. But I clearly remember the late fall of 2001. I was completing my second year in a master’s program for school counseling at the University of...
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Trauma-Informed Care as a Universal Precaution: Beyond the Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire [jamanetwork.com]
By Nicole Racine, Teresa Killam, and Sheri Madigan, JAMA Pediatrics, November 4, 2019 Experiences of childhood adversity are common, with more than 50% of adults reporting having experienced at least 1 adversity as children and more than 6% exposed to 4 or more adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). There is currently a controversial debate in the medical field as to whether the ACEs questionnaire, which asks about abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction before age 18 years, should be...
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Trauma-Informed Classrooms: Choices
One thing that is common among many traumatic events is a complete lack of choices. When a person feels like they do not have a choice or control, it can be triggering and cause the negative emotions that the person ties to the original trauma. While you can do a lot relationally with how you interact with your students, you can also set up your physical space with choices in mind. As you think about choices in your classroom, here are a couple of options you may want to consider. First of...
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Trauma-Informed Classrooms: Educator Self-Care
Working in a school is hard. It doesn’t matter if you work in a suburban, urban, or rural area. It doesn’t matter if you work with 5 year-olds on building empathy, teach 11 year-olds about symbiosis, coach teachers in aligning curriculum, or help high school seniors choose their postsecondary pathways. It is hard work. From the cacophony of lockers closing at dismissal, to the challenge of getting 25 sets of 8 year-old eyes looking at you in synchrony, schools are a special kind of organized...
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Tuition or Dinner? Nearly Half of College Students Surveyed in a New Report Are Going Hungry (nytimes.com)
In the coming weeks, thousands of college students will walk across a stage and proudly accept their diplomas. Many of them will be hungry. A survey released this week by Temple University’s Hope Center for College, Community and Justice indicated that 45 percent of student respondents from over 100 institutions said they had been food insecure in the past 30 days. In New York, the nonprofit found that among City University of New York (CUNY) students, 48 percent had been food insecure in...
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Two Community Colleges Show How Students Can Succeed Without Remedial Math Courses [edsource.org]
By Ashley A. Smith, EdSource, November 15, 2019 A San Diego area community college that moved early to eliminate remedial math courses is drawing lots of attention across the state for success in teaching math. Not only are students at Cuyamaca Community College taking math classes that can transfer to four-year colleges, but Latino students are bucking a national trend by outperforming their white counterparts. Cuyamaca, along with College of the Siskiyous in Northern California, were two...
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Univerrsity of Texas, Austin; Whole Communities - Whole Health
Gail's note: Dr, Andres Sciolla from University of CA, Davis shared this link about an interesting interdisciplinary model from the University of Texas, Austin. Take a look! WHOLE COMMUNITIES –WHOLE HEALTH In Texas, many children live in poverty, suffer from chronic illness, or endure abuse and neglect. Despite years of targeted intervention, these issues persist. Changing the way science helps society thrive is our grand challenge. We have the unprecedented technological ability to study...
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University students seeking counseling learn about their ACEs
Dr. Diane Suffridge, a clinical psychologist and director of the University Counseling Services at Dominican University in San Rafael, Calif., has been interested in trauma for many years. But last summer that interest took a sudden and interesting turn. A student counselor she advised had written a research paper on the link between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) health and mental health outcomes in foster youth, and it gave the student a new view of the patients she counseled at the...
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Using the Truncated Nominal Group Process As a Trauma Informed Research Example in an Introductory Sociology Class.
Dennis Haffron MS Social research techniques are taught in all introductory sociology classes. The technique that I have been using in my classes is a truncated version of the nominal group process. I have recently found that this technique works very well as a trauma sensitive research technique. (I believe that it is another example of ACEs hard science supporting a best practice.) The nominal group process encourages participation, reduces conflict, increases involvement of all...