Tagged With "Bad Kids"

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...

The connection I’m building with my students starts every day with a box of Cocoa Puffs. Name-brand cereal may not sound all that special, but it’s something most of my students can’t afford. It’s something I remember longing for when I was a kid. Even though our school serves breakfast in the classroom to all students, I bring a group of boys from our K-4 school together for a special breakfast to fuel their day with a dose of self-esteem. We eat and we talk, and they get to start their day...

The two biggest myths about ACEs science are: MYTH #1 — That it’s just about the 10 ACEs in the ACE Study — the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study . It’s about sooooo much more than that. MYTH #2 — And that it’s just about ACEs…adverse childhood experiences. These two myths are intertwined. The ACE Study issued the first of its 70+ publications in 1998, and for many people it was the lightning bolt, the grand “aha” moment, the unexpected doorway into a blazing new...

When Grace Dearborn started her career teaching high school students, she felt confident about how to teach but unprepared for managing behavior in her classroom. During more challenging disciplinary moments with students, she used her angry voice with them, thinking that would work. Instead, on one occasion, an escalated situation led to a student following her around the classroom for 15 minutes while she was teaching until security could come to escort the student out of the class.

Called the Telstar Freshman Academy, or TFA, it involves all its district’s ninth graders in a hands-on learning method that uses outdoor-based projects and community-building activities as ways to teach across several disciplines. The program is aimed at helping students feel connected to each other and their community in a place where — as in so many rural areas hit hard by the opioid epidemic and the 2008 recession — connectedness and a shared sense of purpose have been in short supply.

Laura's note: As the first paragraph of the following blog post excerpt implies, a lot of adults need someone to tell them their "normal" isn't "normal" too. If it's all you've ever known and you're surrounded by friends and family who've had similarly unhealthy early experiences, how would you know otherwise? It took me a quarter of a century (literally) to realize that I experienced trauma throughout certain points in my childhood. It took me another year to realize that my behaviors were...

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...

This pandemic has been stressful for millions of children like Kai. Some have lost a loved one to COVID-19, and many families have lost jobs, their homes and even reliable access to food. If that stress isn't buffered by caring adults, it can have lifelong consequences. "Kids have had extended exposure to chaos, crisis and uncertainty," says Matt Biel, a child psychiatrist at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. "If kids don't return to school and get a lot of attention paid to security,...