Tagged With "public speaking"

Imagine the power of putting a handful of kids together in a class to tell their stories in their own words—and earn credits in the process. This school year, Learn4Life’s Innovation High School (IHS) San Diego – Lakeside is offering a spoken word poetry course titled “Dramatic Literature”. The course engages youth in classic works of literature and empowers teens to take charge of their own futures and unearth their potential. Annabelle Reyes, a Drama Lit student, told how beneficial the...

Teachers and staff at several northern Los Angeles County Learn4Life Resource Centers recently completed a Professional Development (PD) titled “Privileged Thinking in Education”. At this PD, staff learned that privileged thinking is defined as an imbalance of power, experience, and access to resources that influence our opinions on the actions of others. They also watched an eye-opening video , which showed how much privilege some have, without even realizing it. The staff also analyzed how...

Black people, including youth, are less likely to receive adequate care for mental health issues for a number of reasons: disparities in access to care, stigma about mental illness and lack of culturally competent mental health practitioners. According to a study published in the International Journal of Health Services , black children are about half as likely as white children to get mental health treatment. As the CBC task force, mental health experts and policy makers mull over ideas to...

In the 1950s, after renovations were complete, visitors could wander into the chapel and see statues of saints and pictures of the Virgen de Guadalupe on the stucco walls. They could see the simple wooden pews that still filled the church and, outside, the stones once used to grind grain, and then wander through the Spanish-style garden with its large gray fountain, rose bushes and lemon trees that glowed in the California sun. Tour guides typically avoided the darker details of its history,...

By Brett Simpson, San Francisco Chronicle, June 18, 2020 On Wednesday afternoon, over 300 California educators, parents, and students tuned into Facebook Live to hear high school students speak honestly about their own experiences of racism, implicit bias, and trauma at school. The “ Student Support Circle: Institutional Racism and Implicit Bias ,” was co-hosted by the California Department of Education and the National Equity Project, and is the first among several initiatives state...

Karen Clemmer, the Northwest community facilitator with ACEs Connection, was already deeply interested in the CDC/Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study when she and a colleague from the Child Parent Institute were invited to lunch by ACEs Connection founder and publisher Jane Stevens in 2012. But that lunch meeting changed everything. Karen Clemmer “Jane helped us see a bigger world,” says Clemmer. “She came with a much wider lens. She didn’t look only at Sonoma County, she...

If there’s one concern about distance learning that educators have during these times, it’s that students are having difficulty being motivated. A lack of motivation is perfectly understandable given the severity of the pandemic, the financial hardships and the shortcomings of video conferencing platforms. But that doesn’t necessarily mean teachers can’t prioritize motivation and curiosity, which were already suffering pre-pandemic because of the way schools often rely on tests and grades to...

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,...

NEW EPISODE OF THE 180 PODCAST Listen: Jeff Duncan-Andrade: The Purpose of Education Should Be Youth Wellness "When you find the tenacity and the will to show up to school in a society that teaches you to hate yourself for the color of your skin and the texture of your hair, the language that your parents speak, the neighborhood that you come from, and you still show up? How do we not have institutions that see that as the most important ingredient for intellectual development?" — Jeff...

Image: Trauma-resilient care is becoming an essential tool for educators, especially at the high school level. To read more of Ann Abajian's article, please download the attachment to this blog post. LOS ANGELES ( June 1 , 2023) – Trauma-resilient practices are the next step in helping teachers effectively support students affected by childhood trauma, a growing epidemic among our youth. A new program that trains and certifies schools and educators called Trauma-Resilient Educational...