Tagged With "Guarantees Meals for All Students"
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Mental Health Is The Biggest Issue Teens Face Today, New Research Shows (bustle.com)
A new survey from the Pew Research Center found that seven-in-10 teens identified anxiety and depression as a major problem they face, The New York Times reported. While being a teenager has long been synonymous with angst, it's important to distinguish typical teen behavior from anxiety and depression, which are diagnosable mental health conditions . Though issues like bullying, substance use disorder, alcohol consumption , and gang violence were also cited as problems, mental health was...
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Mind & Body Empowerment for Human Trafficking Victims (starr.org)
Building Resilience and Belonging through Trauma-Sensitive Yoga Starr believes, as its founder Floyd Starr did, that there is no such thing as a bad child. And, when you provide a safe environment, when you treat a child with dignity and respect, it changes a child’s heart. And that, in the end, is what changes a child’s life. It’s a powerful story that we have been helping children write for over 100 years at Starr Commonwealth. For all students on Starr’s campus, this approach is applied...
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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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Poetry in Motion: Drama Lit Team Preps for Spring Slams By Elisa Knoell Learn4Life Student
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...
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Practicing the pause: addressing tensions in widening the Window of Tolerance
Learning to be less reactive to environmental and/or psychological trauma triggers is supported by practicing the pause within a reparative relationship, which ideally acts as both a container and a scaffold. What this means is that emotional distress is seen, held and understood by supporting partner as a preface to being able to find safety within our own skin...
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Promising Research on Mindfulness for Kids (eomega.org)
Mindfulness trains our brains to respond in ways we choose instead of always in a default manner, which often is a knee-jerk reaction from the reptilian part of the brain. This is especially pertinent in situations that bring up stress or conflict. For instance, if a child has learned to use violence to react to feeling scared, mindfulness can help him or her become aware of this habitual behavior and the feelings underneath it, and ultimately rewire the reaction to a constructive and...
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Proof That Our Thoughts Create Reality (wakeup-world.com)
Water is the most common and arguably most mysterious substance on planet Earth. This substance is so incredible that we as humans through directed thoughts, can literally change the composition of water molecules themselves. You experience and project positive emotions such as love, happiness , and joy and water will literally change in its crystalline structure and become a much more healing and beneficial substance for your being and for the environment in general. This fascinating...
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Reframing Undesired Behaviors as an Aspect of Learning, not Punishment
At the Chula Vista, National City, and Linda Vista resource centers of Learn4Life Innovation High School San Diego, only four students were suspended during the 2016-17 school year – less than 1 percent of the student population of more than 500 students. For the leadership team and staff at Innovation High School this rate was still too high. The team and staff embraced further training on restorative practices, positive behavior supports and interventions in order to better support student...
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Report: Teachers Have Difficulty Engaging Families (thejournal.com)
In a recent survey involving 1,000 primary teachers conducted by ed tech company ClassTag , 45 percent of respondents said more than a quarter of families were “hard to reach and engage,” with 21 percent saying that more than half of their families were hard to engage. However, according to the report, The State of Parent Engagement , parents tend to think that teachers do a good job of communicating. Some 39 percent rated teachers as having good communication, rating them at 9 to 10 points...
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Seeking Workshop Presenters for 2020 Conference for Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools
Do you have specialized expertise in trauma-informed care and education? Has your school taken the journal toward becoming trauma-sensitive ? The Attachment & Trauma Network (ATN) is looking for workshop presenters from a variety of backgrounds: educators (at all levels), counselors, social workers, clinicians, community leaders and others to present at our 2020 conference, February 16-18, 2020 in Atlanta, GA. You will be speaking at the LARGEST gathering of trauma-informed educators in...
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Shootings & Suicides Past the Tipping-Point: ACEs Epidemic & Declining Lifespans in US
Re: Building community by facing collective trauma with hope I am writing from Broward county, Florida, the school district in which the MSD school shooting occurred and that gave rise to the March for Our Lives Movement sparked by our students. Mankind has developed solutions to deal with self-perpetuating waves and EPIDEMICS of BEHAVIORALLY TRANSMITTED Neuro-Toxic Stress, CPTSD Trauma & ACEs that cause FIXED-MINDSET reactive black and white Scarcity-based thinking to increase and...
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SOURCE Seminar Helps Learn4Life Students Thrive
Students of Unity, Respect, Consciousness and Empowerment (S.O.U.R.C.E.) is a seminar offered at Learrn4Life’s Innovation High School National City and Chula Vista resource centers that promotes empowerment, resiliency building, and leadership skills. Students engage in the seminar using project-based learning where they are tasked with creating a public service announcement. This exercise gives students a platform to voice their needs and explore issues that are relevant to them. It also...
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Start Talking with All Students About Consent (acsd.org)
Sex education is about so much more than just sex. A 4-year-old can learn that he has the right to control who touches him. A 6-year-old can learn the correct names of her body parts, so she is able to more accurately report abuse . We can teach 9-year-olds to understand that they can like a toy regardless of whether it's a "girl's" or "boy's" color. At Advocates for Youth , where I lead creative programs to educate and mobilize youth, we believe sex ed should start early in a child's life...
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TEACHER VOICE: Breaking the school-to-prison pipeline with ‘windows and mirrors’ for black boys [hechingerreport.org]
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...
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Teachers notice rise in homelessness among kids (calmatters.org)
Nationwide, public schools identified 1.5 million children experiencing homelessness in the 2017-2018 school year, an increase of 11% from the previous school year, according to a report released in January by the National Center for Homeless Education (NCHE). A small portion of those students are living in unsheltered situations, such as cars, parks, streets or bus stations, a segment that more than doubled from the previous school year. Homeless students in emergency shelters or...
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Teaching 6-Year-Olds About Privilege and Power (kqed.org)
On a sunny day in April, I drove to Head-Royce School in the hills of Oakland, California, to join circle time in Bret Turner ’s first-grade classroom. I had asked Turner if I could sit in on some lessons after reading an article he wrote describing how he teaches about some surprising topics -- like race and class -- in an elementary school classroom. I wanted to see what that looked like and what kind of conversations first-graders at this private school would have around such complicated...
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The Deficit Lens of the 'Achievement Gap' Needs to Be Flipped. Here's How (edweek.org)
For too long, American schools have had a default orientation toward measuring students' abilities and achievement, rather than focusing on the resources-such as engaging learning environments and high-quality, culturally responsive teaching practices-that empower students to learn new concepts and skills. When data reveal students' shortcomings without revealing the shortcomings of the systems intended to serve them, it becomes easier to treat students as deficient and harder to recognize...
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The Focus Room: A Calming, Welcoming Space to Restore Receptivity and Readiness to Learn
As part of the Trauma Informed approach to instruction, the staff at Learn4Life Innovation High School recently created a Focus Room at the National City resource center. The Focus Room provides a space to facilitate restorative processes for students who need a break to refocus or who are not meeting school expectations. In this space, staff assist students and guide them to redirect, recover, and/or return to an internal state conducive to learning. Students can request to use the room or...
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Thich Nhat Hanh answers children’s questions. "Is Nothing Something?" (lionsroar.com)
Children have a special place in the Plum Village tradition of Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. There are special practices, vows, and programs designed especially for children and teens, and Thich Nhat Hanh often fashions the first part of his dharma talks with them in mind. He regularly takes questions from children, and by and large adults can identify with what they ask. Children may be smaller and younger and they may have a funny way with words, but their questions reveal that they,...
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Tips for Creating an Inclusive Virtual Space (aspeninstitute.org)
The COVID-19 global pandemic has forced many organizations to adapt their content and services for virtual spaces. Unfortunately, much work still needs to be done to mend the digital divide that leaves many people without internet access. However, we can all ensure that diversity, equity, and inclusion are centered in our digital engagements—our webinars, podcasts, and other digital meetings and convenings. As you develop digital content for your programs, consider the following reminders...
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ACEs Science Champions Series: Training future counselors to integrate ACEs science in the classroom
Nemia with peacock used in therapy with children. Talking with an animal is often easier than talking with an adult for a child who's experienced abuse. _________________________________________ Toni Nemia, program and clinical director for the University of San Francisco Child and Family Center's School-Based Family Counseling, says that her graduate students are often surprised to hear that ACEs science (adverse childhood experiences) has an international reach. In fact, Scotland is an...
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Two Parkland Suicides Highlight the Lasting Impact of Trauma. Here's How Parents and Teachers Can Help Teens Who Are Struggling [time.com]
A pair of recent suicide deaths in Parkland, Fla., serve as a stark reminder of the lingering effects of trauma — and underscore the importance of providing long-term support to those who are living with its consequences. Just days after 19-year-old Sydney Aiello, who survived the mass shooting at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year, died by suicide , police confirmed that an unnamed current student at the high school had also died by “apparent suicide .” Police did not...
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What Happens When Schools Close for the Academic Year? tcpress.com]
By Karen Gross, Teachers College Press, March 20, 2020 Just as we are hearing about positive research efforts to combat the coronavirus in the relative near term, we are learning that some statewide school systems may stay closed through the end of the 2019–2020 school year. As of this writing, one state—Kansas—has affirmatively closed all its schools until the next academic year. Other states will likely follow in the coming days, including California, Arizona and Texas. The critical...
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Why It's Vital for Native Students to Learn With a Culturally Relevant Lens (kqed.org)
Sometimes Armando Ortiz looks back at his life and can hardly believe where he is today. He grew up in White Center, just south of Seattle, and at a pretty early age got involved in gang life and hanging out with people who were getting into trouble. He says much of his early educational life felt like he was being passed along from one grade to the next, no one paying much attention to whether he was learning or not. He decided to attend Highline Big Picture High School in Seattle to get...
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Why We Can't Afford Whitewashed Social-Emotional Learning (ascd.org)
Social-emotional learning (SEL) skills can help us build communities that foster courageous conversations across difference so that our students can confront injustice, hate, and inequity. SEL refers to the life skills that support people in experiencing, managing, and expressing emotions, making sound decisions, and fostering interpersonal relationships. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) defines five core SEL competencies , including self-awareness,...
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12 Myths of the Science of ACEs
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...
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ACEs Science in Education: The Next Big Challenge is Systems Change #ACEsCon2018
One of the first sessions of the 2018 ACEs Conference: Action to Access discussed the barriers and opportunities for increasing access in the field of education. The main question was: "How can one achieve systematic changes within the field of education?" The session was moderated by Michelle Flowers, a passionate advocate, and the principal of Kinney High in Rancho Cordova, CA, which is part of the Folsom Cordova Unified School District. It included a dynamic and diverse panel of education...
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Blended Learning Built on Teacher Expertise (edutopia.org)
An inside look at a teacher-designed instructional model that combines blended learning, student self-pacing, and mastery-based grading. DEVISING A NEW TEACHING MODEL In an effort to redesign my classroom around my students’ diverse needs, I developed a scalable instructional model built around three core principles. 1. Blended instruction: Most blended learning models involve outsourcing the creation of digital content. In the model I developed and then shared with other teachers at my...
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California Plans to End 'Lunch Shaming' That Guarantees Meals for All Students [usatoday.com]
By Joshua Bote, USA Today, October 14, 2019 A bill signed Saturday by California Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to cut the recent trend in schools of "lunch shaming." SB 265, which was originally introduced by California state Sen. Robert Hertzberg, will require that all public school students have a "state reimbursable" meal provided by the school "even if their parent or guardian has unpaid meal fees." It amends the Child Hunger Prevention and Fair Treatment Act of 2017, which previously stated...
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Compassion-Based Strategies for Managing Classroom Behavior (kqed.org)
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.
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Controlled Burn: A Story of Growth (ascd.org)
My nephew Max (a pseudonym) started skipping school when he was a high school freshman. He did enough to get by, coming home with C 's and D 's on his report cards, but he continued to skip school no matter what anyone did to try to get him to be a "better" student. He not only skipped classes on a regular basis, he skipped studying. He certainly didn't do his homework. His teachers pushed and prodded, his family begged and scolded. If you ask him now, Max says that to him, school seemed...
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Despite Prevalent Trauma, From School Shootings to the Opioid Epidemic, Few States Have Policies to Fully Address Student Needs, Study Finds (the74million.org)
Despite the pervasive effect of stressful experiences — from mass school shootings to the opioid epidemic — on student performance, only 11 states encourage or require staff training on the effects of trauma. Half of states have policies on suicide prevention. And just one state, Vermont, requires a school nurse to be available daily at every school campus. Those are among the key findings of a report released Thursday by the nonprofit Child Trends, which found that most states have failed...
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Distance Learning During Coronavirus Worsens Race, Class Inequality in Education (teenvogue.com)
Abruptly shifting much of the U.S. education system online in the middle of a pandemic was never going to be easy. But for students of color at some of the country’s largest school districts, the practical, technical, and emotional challenges are far more acute. Their lack of reliable internet access and technology is only the tip of the iceberg. Students told Teen Vogue they’re growing anxious as relatives are laid off and bills mount. Mixed-status families are being left out of relief...
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Editorial: Three things California must do for successful K-12 distance learning during coronavirus crisis (sandiegouniontribune.com)
The decision by districts across California to shut K-12 schools last month to slow the spread of coronavirus remains a smart and practical move that aligned with other “social distancing” measures to keep virus deaths at a lower level than in other states — and to allow health-care providers more time to prepare for a projected onslaught of patients. But besides managing the public health crisis, leaders in San Diego and statewide also face another huge challenge: the need to make online...
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Foster Students at Learn4Life Graduating at Rates Higher Than the California State Average (learn4life.org)
Foster youth face multiple obstacles that make it hard to succeed in high school. According to the National Foster Youth Institute , only about half of the nation’s youth raised in foster care end up finishing high school. As such, Learn4Life identified the challenges and solutions for this student population and set up a needs-based support team. Over the past three years, Learn4Life has doubled its foster student graduation rate to 77 percent in the 2018-19 school year, exceeding the...
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Get Lit Program at Learn4Life Charter Schools Ignites Passion for Poetry while Mending Hearts and Souls
Learn4Life students in Fresno carry hardship and experience trauma, many of them without ever having the opportunity to process what they have been through, let alone heal. The Get Lit program focuses on taking those personal traumas and turning them into poetry, giving students a voice and the confidence to use it. The trauma that Learn4Life students have analyzed in the class include issues with disabilities, mental and physical illnesses, physical and mental abuse, drug and alcohol...
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Guide - Creating Trauma-Informed Policies: A Practice Guide for School and Mental Health Leadership
Author, Leora Wolf-Prusan, EdD, School Mental Health lead for SAMHSA's Mental Health Technology Center Pacific Southwest http://mhttcnetwork.org/mhttc/mhttc-psw.html Creating compassionate policies is a cornerstone strategy of educational leadership. This guide provides a deep dive into developing, implementing, and evaluating trauma-informed and compassionate school policies. It highlights four "choice points" for education and mental health leadership: Choice Point 1: Names &...
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Helping Students Overcome Toxic Stress through Science-Based Teaching Practices (stresshealth.org)
“What our students really crave the most is predictability from the adults interacting with them,” says Roger Sapp, a student success teacher at KIPP. For that reason, the one-on-one session is not a reward for being “good” or withheld if something bad happens. The kids who need it can count on it – every day. The scene is from a video by Edutopia (aka the George Lucas Educational Foundation), which has produced a series of more than 20 powerful, engaging shorts on how children learn in...
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Here’s How a Trauma-Informed Approach to Remote Teaching Can Help Students Succeed (educationpost.org)
Many students have had difficulties in life and have struggled to keep up in traditional high school. They have endured challenges such as homelessness, foster care, hunger, abuse, bullying, illness and even human trafficking. Eighty percent are low-income, many are pregnant or parenting teens, and most enroll with us after dropping out, more than a year behind in credits, and reading at lower than a fifth grade level. All school leaders can educate teachers on a trauma-informed approach to...
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How California’s Rural Education Network Is Creating an Online Hub to Better Connect Remote Schools and Empower Teachers to Share Experiences, Strategies & Classroom Materials (the74million.org)
Educators in rural communities face unique challenges, but they also have special strengths that aren’t always found in urban and suburban schools. In California,where 60 percent of districts are in towns or rural areas, a new project is leveraging those strengths to help educators connect with one another and get the support they need. The California Rural Ed Network started in 2017 but recently launched an online resource bank that offers free informational and professional development...
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How Daily Farm Work and Outdoor Projects Make Learning in High School Better for Teens (kqed.org)
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.
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How Reflective Supervision Sessions Help Teachers Cope with the Stress of the Job (kqed.org)
These teachers see the impact of those challenges on their students every day — in the loud, disruptive behaviors they see in some children, or the quiet sadness they see in others. They fret about some of their students, bringing that worry home at the end of the day. For some, that can trigger difficult memories from their own childhoods. For others, it can affect their interactions with their own families. The sessions use an approach called reflective supervision that has long been used...
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How School Closures Can Strengthen Your Family (greatergood.berkeley.edu)
Here in the U.S., millions of families are dealing with school closures. The number of students around the world whose education has been interrupted by the coronavirus is approaching 400 million, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. As closed schools ramp up for online learning, we can retool in our families, too. Here are three practical ways families can cope—and even thrive—despite school closures, event cancellations, and a whole lot more...
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How Self-Compassion Supports Academic Motivation and Emotional Wellness (kqed.org)
If teachers and parents want children to develop resilience and strength, a better approach is to teach them self-compassion, said Dr. Kristin Neff, a psychology professor at the University of Texas and author of Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself . How Self-Compassion Supports Academic Motivation When a student develops self-compassion, the seat of motivation shifts . Neff said that there is an empirical link between self-compassion and growth mindset (the belief...
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In professional development for online teachers, highlighting failure led the way to success (hechingerreport.org)
The Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township, on the west side of Indianapolis, has gotten a fair amount of attention for personalizing the professional development it gives to teachers in its virtual high school and blended learning programs. The fact that voluntary professional development can attract 90 percent of teachers is seen as a wild success. It’s that success the district, and by extension, Michele Eaton, its director of virtual and blended learning, has been known for.
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Kids From Trauma NEED Someone to Tell Them Their Normal Isn’t “Normal” [blogs.psychcentral.com]
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...
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Launching a Revolution (Harvard Public Health)
"Ultimately, she wants all primary care—for both children and adults—to be “trauma-informed care.” “One basic of trauma-informed care is having the entire clinical team trained to support patient safety, confidentiality, and privacy, in order to avoid triggering or retraumatizing patients. Another basic is supporting and connecting patients and families to resources. And another is understanding the principles of self-care,” she says. Ideally, every pediatric or primary-care practice would...
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Learn4Life Conducts Level 1 Trauma-Informed Training to “Train-the-Trainers”
Learn4Life is taking an organization-wide approach to educational service delivery grounded in understanding trauma, its consequences and promoting healing and resilience. To help staff better understand the approach, training was recently conducted for Learn4Life leaders including teachers, counselors, and administrative staff. The training is designed to increase understanding of proactive, practical, trauma-informed approaches to create cultures of inclusivity. The goal is the have all...
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Learn4Life Is Contributing to Workforce Development (prnewswire.com)
Learn4Life , a network of nonprofit high school dropout recovery programs, believes job skills training needs to start in high school. "We work with students who have fallen so far behind in school that they're unlikely to graduate. We help them get a diploma for free and work with community partners to provide job skills," explained Miguel-Angel Soria , director of career technical education (CTE). "We have teens who a couple years ago wouldn't have thought they could ever graduate, much...
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Learn4Life Staff Learns De-Escalation Techniques
At a recent Professional Development (PD), staff and teachers at Learn4Life resource centers throughout the San Fernando Valley and Northern Los Angeles County, learned about de-escalation techniques. The PD provided the staff with resources designed to equip them to organize their thinking and calmly respond to and effectively de-escalate situations to avoid a potential crisis. The techniques they learned included: Defining the behavior and how to approach a situation QTIP! (Quit Taking It...