Blog

Nearly one year ago, schools across the country abruptly shut their physical doors due to COVID-19. In spite of heroic efforts on the part of teachers and administrators, the pivot to online learning was uneven and chaotic at best. The Pew Research Center estimates that only half of students have successfully engaged in distance learning while at home, with students from lower income families, in particular, losing ground. One report predicts the pandemic will cause the average student to...

By Loren McCullough and Dr. Bob Sege, 3/11/21, positiveexperience.org/blog What’s going on with families during the COVID pandemic? In partnership with the American Academy of Pediatrics , Prevent Child Abuse America , and with assistance and financial support from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) , The Lucile Packard Foundation , the California Department of Public Health , and KidsData.org , we surveyed California parents, to find out how they are doing during the...

The pandemic has created a lot of heartbreak, fear and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among the workforce. On top of our personal woes, many employees have grappled with fears of loved ones and themselves contracting Covid-19, not to mention the isolation and burnout of remote working and helping children with schoolwork. Although many of us have endured a lot of stress and mental health challenges, there’s good news on the horizon, known as post-traumatic growth (PTG)—the benefits...

This ecological framework should give us pause as we consider notions of “human resource” and “human capital” in nonprofit organizations. In traditional business terms, a “resource” may be fully extractable, as Berry described, and “capital” may be under the full control of the corporation to expand its resource extraction as much as possible. These terms and their underlying belief systems, if left unchallenged, can lead us into dangerous waters if we are committed to the social sector...

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government has provided billions of dollars in additional funding to prevent hunger and help ensure that children and families have access to healthy, affordable food. Part of the emergency funding is dedicated to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides short-term financial support to low-income individuals and families who struggle to afford food. This brief describes the purpose of SNAP and who it serves,...

Pandemic school is taking its toll on students, especially teens. A recent study , conducted by NBC News and Challenge Success, a nonprofit affiliated with the Stanford Graduate School of Education, found that 50 percent more kids in high school report feeling disengaged from school this year than last. In December, Education Week reported that schools were seeing “ dramatic increases in the number of failing or near-failing grades ” on report cards. A major symptom of school disengagement...

If you are looking to make someone — even yourself — feel better during what has been a hard winter of the pandemic , consider writing a gratitude letter. You can think of it as a slightly longer and more meaningful thank you note, but instead of offering thanks for a physical gift, you are offering thanks for something that was done or said. There are two excellent reasons for writing a gratitude letter: It will make you feel really good, and it will make the recipient feel great. Among the...

Anticipatory grief is a well-documented phenomenon in grief counseling, said Dr. Katherine Shear, the founder and director for the Center for Complicated Grief at Columbia University. But usually researchers study anticipatory grief in environments like hospices , where loss is imminent. What many of us are experiencing right now is more nebulous. Dr. Shear cautioned that spiraling into anticipatory grief for a loss that may not even happen is likely to be unhelpful. Of course, even if you...

We are looking for Middle School and High School student leaders for two new student-led initiatives with the 16 Strong Project. The time is now. Given the raging COVID-19 pandemic that has upended all of our lives, our youth are struggling. It is imperative that we engage and listen to students about their needs. We need to educate them on what it means to face adversity and more importantly, how we can overcome it and thrive despite that adversity. Arguably every single young person now...

With all of the papers, homework and tests that cross a teacher’s desk, you’d think that a healthy relationship to mistake-making would come easy, but it’s not that simple. Messing up does not come naturally for most people, especially teachers who are constantly under the scrutiny of students, guardians, colleagues and administrators. And because teachers are tasked with making an estimated 3,000 non-trivial decisions everyday , it makes sense that some of those decisions will end up being...

SEL. Social-Emotional Learning (SEL). My lil’ ole school counselor heart should be beaming with joy. SEL is FINALLY receiving the limelight it has long deserved in education. Most everyone everywhere is proclaiming the importance of SEL! So why do I want to smack myself upside the head (Homer Simpson style – D’OH) most every time I read about, hear about, or see an SEL effort in a school. Because we keep getting it WRONG! So before I start in with all the ways in which we are screwing it up,...

Children are more likely to live in poverty than any other age group in the United States. Poverty undermines children’s development and threatens their long-term prospects. In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, 12 million children lived in families with incomes below the federal poverty level; another 15 million lived in families that were one economic shock away from slipping into poverty. The COVID recession has since swelled the ranks of both groups. Money—especially in the form of a...