Just as the screening of Paper Tigers ended on the night of Oct. 7, 2015, the 400-plus people who nearly filled Brunelle Hall at Davis High School burst into a sustained applause. Many had tears streaming down their faces -- tears of joy.
Most members of the audience were educators, or involved with children's issues. They included Yolo County Supervisor and First 5 Yolo Chair Jim Provenza; Davis Joint Unified School District Superintendent Winfred Roberson; Davis Mayor Pro-Tem Robb Davis; and four members of the Davis Joint Unified School District School Board -- Susan Lovenburg, Barbara Archer, Madhavi Sunder and Tom Adams.
The night before, in Woodland, another crowd at Pioneer High School Auditorium also applauded the documentary, which
follows six students through a year at Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA, the first trauma-informed high school in the U.S. Watching from the audience were Woodland Joint Unified School District Superintendent Maria Armstrong; Carol Souza Cole, vice president of the Yolo County Board of Education; and Yolo Superior Court Judge Steven Basha, who emphasized the importance for all schools to become trauma-informed, so that fewer kids would end up in his courtroom.
After the screening in Davis, about 100 people stayed for an hour to hear counselors from local school districts explain how they're laying the foundation for Yolo County Schools to become trauma-informed, and then for a Q-and-A, which ranged beyond education into other sectors.
More than 200 comment cards were turned in, and card after card said: “Those are our kids.” (The Yolo Resilience Network, which manages this group, invited people who provided their email addresses to join Yolo County ACEs Connection; so far, more than 70 people have joined! To you new members: Welcome!)
After the Q-and-A, the members of the Yolo County ACEs Connection group talked with the mayor pro-tem, a teacher at UC Davis, a couple of physicians, and teachers from outside Yolo County, all of whom said they wanted to learn how to bring ACEs info to their colleagues.
If you want to see Paper Tigers again, or want to encourage a friend or colleague to see it, be sure to catch the special screening at 7 p.m. this Friday night, Oct. 16, at the Crest Theater in Sacramento. Producer/director Jamie Redford, as well as former Lincoln High School Principal Jim Sporleder and science teacher Erik Gordon, both of whom are featured in the documentary, will appear after the screening on a panel at the theater.
The documentary is part of a two-day workshop, Beyond Trauma: Building a Resilient Sacramento, to be held at Meristem in Sacramento. To order tickets to Paper Tigers and find out more about the workshop, go to ResilientSac.org.
Comments (0)