Apart from being dressed in Winston Churchill attire, Tod Sullivan has another connection to the figure- he was one of 150 people prestigiously selected for a Churchill Fellowship out of 1000 applicants. A resident of Lowestoft, England, Tod applied for his fellowship out of a curiosity to learn more about systematic and holistic approaches to mental health. Thus he embarked on a six-week trip to the United States, to research first-hand how American schools are incorporating trauma-informed practices into their academics. Upon his return, Tod will present his findings to his local community of Lowestoft, to “contribute to making Lowestoft the best place in the world for positive mental health.”
Having made previous stops in Boston, Washington DC, Oregon, he has been speaking with school principals, staff, counselors, teachers, and others to observe trauma-informed practices.Tod’s blog chronicles his trip, learning about calm-rooms, positive behavior systems, meeting with various sectors of individuals and organizations. While in DC he met with Osaremen Okolo, an aide to Senator Patty Murray, to discuss their strategies to advance trauma-informed practices within politics. Tod has also connected with Kody Russell of Kitsap County, exploring the loss of the logging industry and its impact on families, the county’s focus on schools and community, and the research and approach to data interpretation. Read more from Tod’s blog here: http://todtalks.blogspot.com/
Additionally, in his blog, Tod shares his admiration of Dr. Dario Longhi’s blend of quantitative and qualitative research methods. He writes that “[Dario’s] participatory research methods mean that you make use of interviews and rich anecdotal evidence from people having a lived experience, whilst understanding the quantitive data that provides numbers and figures and weight of evidence to support the concepts that are being developed.”
[Tod, Dario, and Kody]
Now, Tod has made his way to Walla Walla, to continue learning about community, culture, and their role in resilience. Alongside Teri Barila of CRI, he has attended the Parent Council to Head Start/ECEAP, an federally-funded organization which creates family development programs that provide health and social services for children alongside education. In addition to meeting many CRI partners, he has also visited Whitman College and the house of President Kathleen Murray in their announcement of a Whitman Fellow- one who will work with CRI and Dario Longhi on designing an evaluation protocol for their after-school program.
[Tod with the Parent Council to Head Start/ECEAP]
And on October 7th, he will play a fun role in our October is Resilience Month, by helping host a Resilience Treasure Hunt in the theme embracing his English accent: London. The event will be from 2-4 pm at the Walla Walla County Rural Library, 1640 Plaza Way. View the official event poster here! https://www.pacesconnection.com...h-guest-tod-sullivan
Tod is a passionate ally to our trauma-informed mission, our belief that community is the solution to developing resilience from ACEs, and we are excited to host him in our own local community.
In his own blog, Tod closes a post with this powerful paragraph on community:
“I think that a simple piece of learning is this - that community resilience is a formed from a number of areas, schools and health of course, families, churches and community groups, but also in community pride, in culture and history. If the breaches in resilience are linked to culture then the repair will come from culture and so on - so we must seek to understand where the harm came from in order to understand from where the healing will be derived. I have said before that communities have all of the resources they need to heal themselves, we just need to help them find them - I'm sincere in that belief now.”
Follow Tod's blog at http://todtalks.blogspot.com/
Read an article on Tod in his local newspaper, the Lowestoft Journal: http://www.lowestoftjournal.co...ca-amazing-1-5697205
Read more about Tod's visit to the Hillsboro School District: https://www.hsd.k12.or.us/site...D=8467&PageID=35
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