Chances are you've already seen this... it does have nearly 2.5 MILLION views and counting since its posting yesterday! (May 25, 2016). It is the commencement speech of Donovan Livingston, newly graduated from Harvard Graduate School of Education with his Master's in Education (Ed.M.).
The National Institutes of Health has partnered with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to fund five new research centers to improve health in communities overburdened by pollution and other environmental factors that contribute to health disparities. Within each center, scientists will partner with community organizations to study these concerns and develop culturally appropriate ways to reduce exposure to harmful environmental conditions. “It is important to understand...
If you want to look at how a toy evolves over time, Legos are probably your best bet. It’s the largest toy manufacturer in the world, for one. It has its own movie and theme parks , as well as books and video games that supplement its iconic building block sets. Plus, it’s been making those bricks since 1949 , allowing the researchers to trace the evolution of a single genre of toy over decades. “There are very few toys that have been continuously on the market,” Christoph Bartneck, a...
The Urban Child Institue (TUCI) has given $2 million to the University of Memphis for a project focused on the health of at-risk children. Earlier this year, the Memphis nonprofit organization announced a new gifting strategy that would give $8 million in 2016 to organizations supporting children's needs. The new strategy increased the amount of money TUCI will give annually to children's causes. The U of M's $2 million grant was outlined in April as a part of that gifting strategy. The...
I'm not sure if this has already made the rounds, but I didn't see it on after scrolling 10 pages, and it's such good news, it's definitely worth a repost! "Oakland Unified school board voted unanimously Wednesday night to eliminate willful defiance as a reason to suspend any student and to invest at least $2.3 million to expand restorative justice practices in its schools". What a beautiful commitment to the child, to meeting their actual needs rather than just sending them away with their...
Although it’s too soon to tell if integrating trauma-informed and resilience-building practices based on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) sciences is making a difference for the teens living at Home on the Range , a residential treatment center in Sentinel Butte, ND, it’s made a huge difference for the people who work there. They now understand that kids aren’t born bad. “ACEs has enlightened us,” says Mike Gooch, clinical program director for the center, which is located on a 1,600-acre...
Glenn Towery had already served 11 years for stealing a car at gunpoint when he was transferred to Kern Valley State Prison in 2009. Riding up I-5 to the San Joaquin Valley, 150 miles north of his native Los Angeles, he probably smelled the sulfuric odor of industrial cow lots. But once he arrived, he would inhale something worse: a fungus that might kill him. Towery complained of flu-like symptoms for a year before he was diagnosed. He’d wake coated in sweat. “It feels like something heavy...
Though the words “parental leave” appear regularly in press releases and news articles, most companies and employees still think and talk primarily about maternity leave: time for a new mother to recover from childbirth, breastfeed her infant, and—unwittingly—become an expert in family management. “My husband doesn’t know what size shoe my kid wears.” “My husband doesn’t know what time the baby naps.” “My husband doesn’t have the daycare number stored in his phone.” These were just a few of...
Richard T. Cole, who most people know as Rick, is a remarkable man who’s had several careers, sometimes simultaneously. I was first aware of him when he was press secretary and chief of staff to Governor Jim Blanchard in the 1980s. Later, he was a senior executive at Blue Cross Blue Shield, and worked with Mike Duggan back when the man who became Detroit’s mayor was overhauling the Detroit Medical Center. But Rick Cole is also an academic with a doctorate who was a professor and department...
Like many parents, Camille Proctor went to her first support group for parents of children with autism to feel less alone. Her son Hunter had just been diagnosed, and Proctor had lots of questions. All of the other parents at the various support groups she went on to visit were white; Proctor is African American. When she asked questions about how she should teach her son to interact with police, given that the wrong response by a black boy or man could be deadly, she just got blank stares.
A n expert on the way trauma at home also hurts children in the classroom encouraged Vermont educators to build a coordinated program to help affected students. Lynn Dolce spoke recently about the growing problem of “ toxic stress ” before more than 250 school superintendents, special education directors, and state employees who work in education and health. A group of children in Montpelier. File photo by Jasper Craven/VTDigger “This is not a mental health issue, this is a public health...
It's clear that coming from more humble beginnings can make ordinary life tougher in a lot of ways, and now a new study suggests that the experience of poverty and adversity can also alter biological mechanisms related to brain function, giving rise to increased chances of developing depression. By analysing the brains of adolescents, researchers have found that those growing up in households with lower socioeconomic status accumulated greater amounts of a chemical tag on a gene linked to...
In 2015, the demand for rental apartments reached its highest level ever since the 1960s . The pinched access to mortgage credit after the Great Recession is one reason why. Another is that many Americans—especially the poor and people of color —haven’t felt the effects of the economic recovery, and may not be able to rustle up the funds for a down payment. A third reason is that Millennials, now the largest generation ever since the baby boomers , are especially loath to buy homes. The...
From VOA Learning English, this is the Health and Lifestyle report. Health experts say there is evidence that many white women in the United States are dying too soon. In other words, they are dying before the average age of death in society as a whole. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics studied death rates nationwide. The center found that life expectancy rates for every population group has either gone up or stayed unchanged. Every...
[Photo by Evan-Amos ] The Village of Newburgh Heights, outside Cleveland, is a working class community of about 2,500 residents. It's also home to the most progressive parental leave policy of any municipality in the nation. As of last week, full-time public employees will be eligible for six months of paid parental leave after the birth of a child. [For more of this story go to http://www.npr.org/2016/05/24/479349640/small-ohio-town-passes-progressive-parental-leave-policy]