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Floyd Maxey stares at the computer screen currently flickering with all the evidence of his high school career’s rocky start: a B in one class, D’s in three others — and an F. Sitting next to him in the computer lab, his mentor clicks into the page detailing the high school freshman’s current D in algebra. “How’s Ms. Ruiz’s class been going?” asks the mentor, 23-year-old Eleanor Kim. “Ms. Eleanor, I don’t like that class,” Floyd groans. “It’s hard up in there.” “You should be asking for...

When we begin to reveal to ourselves all that babies and young children need and deserve to optimally grow and be themselves, it may bring up some of the experiences of what we didn’t get and wanted.   We will discuss skills of orienting, tracking and titrating autonomic nervous system cycling, modulating therapeutic pace, and recognizing the therapeutic leading edge.

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. Every year at this time I’m reminded of when I began educating people about how to prevent child sexual abuse. Adults have a hard time talking about child abuse, especially child sexual abuse. That’s because not only is CSA a horrific violation of an innocent child’s trust but it’s also about sex. In our society, sex is not a topic most adults feel comfortable talking about in public. When I decided to educate adults about CSA twelve years ago,...

The Program Assistant is a two-year grant funded position, with the potential for extension, with Los Angeles Education Partnership. This position reports to the Project Director. This is currently a is a 75% position. This project is designed to support and implement a trauma-informed school environment in selected K-12 schools both within and outside of California through a partnership with Kaiser Permanente. A central component of this project’s approach to a trauma-informed school...

The Assistant Director position is a two-year grant funded position, with the potential for extension, with Los Angeles Education Partnership. This project is designed to support and implement a trauma-informed school environment in selected K-12 schools both within and outside of California through a partnership with Kaiser Permanente. A central component of this project’s approach to a trauma-informed school environment is to embed practices at each school that prioritize the wellness of...

ACEs, Adversity's Impact An intractable problem: ‘A lot of people don’t have a rainbow in their story’ From generation to generation: An epidemic of childhood trauma haunts Milwaukee Brain and Biology Twin Research Suggests How Stress Shapes the Adolescent Brain Children's Mental Health At the Intersection of Kindness and Science, Center Team Gets to Sesame Street National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day: May 4, 2017 Courts, Juvenile Justice, Corrections, and Probation ‘Sesame Street’...

On Wednesday, March 22, I had the opportunity to attend a community gathering in Marin County, CA, that was convened by their Health and Human Services Department. The event was a “Learning Lab” where ideas and innovation are explored to see if there might be a better way of caring for and working with vulnerable members of the community. The gathering — Networking Breakfast: Addressing Adverse Childhood Experiences and Building Resiliency — was located at the Marin County Office of...

At the end of a much anticipated minimum day, teachers and administrators from Thomas Page Academy (K-8) in Cotati, CA, rallied their energy and enthusiasm to learn more about how ACEs science impacts their Title I school students. The theme of the presentation was on building resilience. We discussed the science of ACEs and strategies that school staff can use to model mindfulness, and reduce the risk of teacher burnout. Teachers were particularly ready to learn more after reading an...

For years, local politicians, county health officials and health care professionals have been talking about making Sonoma County the healthiest county in the state by 2020, a goal that is at the heart of numerous local health, education and socio-economic initiatives. In 2011, Sonoma County ranked 12th among 56 California counties surveyed in the first County Health Rankings by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It took three years for the county to break into the top 10, reaching eighth.

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover. Increasingly in the United States, you also can’t judge a library’s value to its community by simply its books. Let us explain. In a previous blog post, we’ve noted the importance of “third places” in strengthening communities – meaning those places that are neither one’s home (first place) nor workspace (second place). A range of such third places, from churches to beauty salons, play an important role in community building. They are the...

A prison psychologist mourns a patient he tried to save. This article was published in collaboration with Vice . I’d been working for several years as a psychologist for prisoners in Washington state when I was tasked with treating a deeply troubled man in his early 20s. I can’t tell you his name, or his mental health diagnosis. I can tell you that treating him was the most significant professional challenge I have ever faced. [For more of this story, written by Ryan Quirk, go to ...

Be ruthless. As a U.S. Army recruit, that’s how Christopher L. Kukk was taught to get ahead—and it’s a philosophy you’ll hear in boardrooms, on sports teams, and even in school. The theory is that there’s only so much success to go around, and you have to aggressively compete for it. But according to Kukk’s new book, The Compassionate Achiever: How Helping Others Fuels Success , ruthlessness is overrated. Instead, he outlines a pathway to success and achievement paved with compassion ,...