Tagged With "Prepared mind"

One of my favorite things about meditation is how uncomplicated the practice is. When my life gets hectic or my mind feels overrun with racing thoughts, the simplicity of meditation can be a huge relief. There’s a scientific basis for this feeling: Meditation reduces activity in parts of the brain associated with mind-wandering and unhappiness, according to a 2011 study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . When I teach meditation, I try to keep my instructions concise so as...

I'll be the first to admit that when I think of the phrase "higher education," certain things come to mind: ivy-clad red brick buildings, crisp fall afternoons punctuated by the staccato sounds of a university drumline rehearsal, and young wide-eyed students hanging on every word from the profound professor who looms large over the time-worn lectern. These stylized visualizations are informed by my own experiences in college, surely, but also by larger cultural narratives that contour the...

When Mario Martinez went to Liberty University, a private Christian college in Lynchburg, Virginia, the affluence astonished him. A student’s car would break down and she’d have a new one within a couple of weeks. “It was mind blowing,” he said. “To see that people can have so much.” And Liberty – with a median family income of about $75,000 a year – isn’t even that rich compared to what you will find at America’s most prestigious private colleges, where incomes are closer to $200,000 a year...

"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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

The University of Florida has fostered a strong relationship with Peace4Tarpon, through the College of Public Health and Health Professions, for a few years now. Recently, the conversations between the two were focused on how they could partner to take the aims and methods of the trauma-informed initiative beyond Tarpon Springs and into a more accessible, formal format. This sparked the idea to create a course available to learners who can take the information and spread the culture of...

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.

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...

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...

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...

When you first hear about it, it sounds unlikely, fact that something that happened to someone in utero, at the age of two months, or four years, or any time in childhood, is what is killing them as an adult, or making them want to die, or making them want to hurt themselves or others. Yet the connection between childhood trauma and adult disease, mental illness, addiction, suicide, violence – most all of society’s ills – is as irrefutable as the myriad truths revealed about it in the...

The shooting in Florida isn’t only a gun regulation issue. It’s a systems change issue. All of our systems have to change their approach to changing behavior — whether it’s criminal, unhealthy or unwanted behavior — from a blame, shame and punishment approach, to one that is based in understanding, nurturing and healing….in other words, ACEs science.

NEW ORLEANS —“Diversity” was top of mind when Angel Carter was applying to schools. Raised in an African-American enclave in Atlanta, she said, “I would have loved to go to an HBCU,” the acronym for historically black colleges and universities. But college should stretch you, she felt, so Carter chose Tulane, where the student body is 75 percent white. “I hadn’t had many interactions with white people,” said Carter, now a senior majoring in anthropology and cell biology. “I wanted to work on...

Hi, Suzette. Welcome to the community! Do you mind sharing information about where you're at and what your team is doing?

Dennis, there are a few Universities that have ACEs Connection communities, do you mind if i share with them? Gail (ACEs Connection staff)

Hello Andrew and Dennis. I am happy to see others in Illinois doing this work. I presume you are part of the IL ACEs collaborative? Dennis, I could copy and paste your post, but change "Sociology" to "Community Psychology" and it would be a fairly accurate description of my work. I find it ironic that the field of community psychology does so little in this area. I recently sent out a post to our listserv asking for anyone who is doing work related to ACEs and found few people. What I did...

Suzette and Dennis, Our ACEs in Higher Education community of practice at Harper College is just getting started--we're conducting a literature review on the topic this semester, and then will use that information to inform next steps. We've discussed hosting a regional conference and perhaps this is a point of collaboration? My e-mail is aanastas@harpercollege.edu . I would love to get together and don't mind traveling to Cicero Best, Andrew

(Pictured here are LLC International University students who serve as core leaders of Lithuanian non-profit Gausus Gyvenimas) In a year when the world has weathered trauma surrounding the global pandemic of COVID-19, quite surprisingly, new doors opened for me to share about the science of resilience in Lithuania. In 2017, a faith-based organization served as a means of introduction to a young minister from Pakistan named Robin Mubarik. Since our initial meeting we have only remained...

LAST YEAR, NEARLY 18,000 CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS WERE CURRENTLY OR FORMERLY IN FOSTER CARE. These students, and students from other vulnerable or underserved groups, are motivated and resilient. However, many face higher rates of trauma and unmet mental health needs, coupled with systemic barriers that prevent them from accessing services. Without support, these challenges can contribute to lower college completion rates. BACKGROUND In 2018-2020, John Burton Advocates for Youth...

By Nicole Lynn Lewis and Vinice Davis, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, July 13, 2021 When Ariel Ventura-Lazo’s son was born, he had a lot on his mind. Would he be a good father? Would he be able to support his young family as the bills piled up? He had tried community college while working full time shortly after graduating from high school, but he didn’t do well and figured college wasn’t for him. Now that he was a father, he realized his job as a cash vault teller wouldn’t pay the bills and...

Discussions about Indigenizing the academy have abounded in Canada over the past few years. And yet, despite the numerous policies and reports that have been written, there is a lack of clarity around what pedagogical methods could help to decolonize our institutions. In Sharing Breath: Embodied Learning and Decolonization , edited by Sheila Batacharya and Yuk-Lin Renita Wong, contributors demonstrate how the academy cannot be decolonized while we still subscribe to the Western idea of mind...

Because of a collaboration with Columbia University and UW-Madison, we have answers to these questions. By Peter Peter Pecora, Casey Family Programs, March 17, 2023 - Overview The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recently released a “ roadmap ” to reduce child poverty by as much as half through the implementation of a series of social policy packages. The aim of this study was to simulate the reductions in Child Protective Services (CPS) involvement and foster care placements that are...

Ben David, co-chair of the North Carolina Chief Justice's Task Force on ACEs-Informed Courts, shares plans to sustain the work done during the two-year term of the Task Force, to "care for our own" speaking of North Carolina's children, youth, families, communities, victims of crimes, members of law enforcement, the judiciary and court officers and staffers. He also shared Chief Justice Paul Newby's hopes of "getting ACEs-informed courts" into the culture, and said a national conference for...