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By Steve Fiedeldey, Benchmark Education, August 31, 2021 Everyone has a story. As our family settled into our cozy living room sofas, my eldest daughter, Tess, turned on a favorite television singing competition. That is when it happened. I heard my own words through the mouth of my daughter. As the hosts of the show became emotional about the contestant’s experience, Tess reflected, “Everyone has a story.” It was during these emotional backstories that I would often reach for the remote to...

By Chip Brownlee, The Trace, August 19, 2021 T he violence intervention team at Hartford Communities That Care is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Within 20 minutes of getting a call from Saint Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut, the staffers spring into action to help a shooting victim recover — from more than just their physical wounds. In many cases, the patient is still unconscious, their name unknown. Hospital-based violence intervention programs —...

Photo: Allison Shelley for American Education By Leigh Deal Victoria Our students are suffering from learning loss. … Schools and teachers should do the following to mitigate learning loss: … We must be ready to diagnose our students’ learning loss. … This type of rhetoric has appeared in our news feeds, educational blogs and journals, curricular textbook programs, and most unfortunately, school districts across the nation. Since the pandemic shutdown, the term “learning loss” has...

Please welcome these three new communities to the PACEsConnection.com network! Chippewa Valley Child Poverty Coalition (WI) Lee County (NC) Community Resilience Collaborative Resilient Bladen (NC) Details about each of them are below as is information about starting and growing your community initiatives and joining the Cooperative of Communities . Chippewa Valley Child Poverty Coalition (WI) : The Chippewa Valley Child Poverty Coalition is a group of individuals with a mission to promote...

By Sarah Schwartz, EducationWeek, August 30, 2021 As state lawmakers continue to introduce legislation that would limit how schools can teach about racism and sexism , some teachers are pushing back and speaking out. This past weekend, educators in more than 50 cities held in-person and virtual events pledging to “teach truth"—in other words, to continue teaching about oppression and injustice in the face of new laws that they believe attempt to stifle these kinds of discussions. These...

By Todd Gazda, CommonWealth, August 31, 2021 ONE CANNOT HELP but be troubled by the events that have transpired across our country over the past few years. The high-profile instances of racism and racial violence we’ve experienced are merely the most recent of in a string of discrimination and injustice brought about by the deeply imbedded systemic racism, violence, and inequity still prevalent in our society today. These incidents dramatically underscore the fact that a substantial amount...

By Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, September 2, 2021 African American children are suffering long-term disadvantages as a result of vast and growing disparities in the wealth of US families, with Black families with kids having access to barely 1 cent for every dollar enjoyed by their white counterparts. The shocking racial wealth gap between families, and its impact on Black and Hispanic kids, is revealed in groundbreaking new research by scholars on US inequality. It shows that the basic...

“Healing anxiety is a journey of inner exploration, where you don’t run away from your fears but embrace them and listen to what they have to say.” - Unknown If you experience anxiety and you have heard that it isn’t possible to heal and you have to manage your anxiety, believe me, what you have heard isn’t true. If it had been true, people like famous spiritual master- Eckhart Tolle and certified NACBT Life Coach Dennis Simsek wouldn’t be healing people across the world today. Both Eckhart...

The PACEs Connection team will be taking a week of rest following the Labor Day holiday on September 6. We will be out of the office from September 7-10. We will not be checking or responding to emails or calls. We will not be publishing the Daily Digests and Weekly Roundup during this time. Although the field of positive and adverse childhood experiences has always been a stressful one in which to work, we have been feeling especially overwhelmed lately. Our capacity for feeling, both...

When we engage in emotional eating, we’re using food as our coping mechanism of choice to deal with whatever is inside. After all, it’s easy, accessible, and gives a perceived sense of relief—at least for a little while. The problem is, we never actually deal with the deeper emotion, sometimes rooted in ACEs. It just gets stuffed down and repressed. Then, there's the weight gain...

By Darryl Fears and Dino Grandoni, The Washington Post, September 2, 2021 Racial minorities in the United States will bear a disproportionate burden of the negative health and environmental impacts from a warming planet, the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday, including more deaths from extreme heat and property loss from flooding in the wake of sea level rise. The new analysis, which comes four days after Hurricane Ida destroyed homes of low-income and Black residents in...

Happy birthday to us! Happy birthday to us! Well, sort of. This week marks just over 6 months since ACEs Caribbean Community (ACEs) was formed here on the PACEs Connection platform. Actually, the platform name change from ACEs Connection occurred during our first month here. In that time, we have been pleased to see a coming together of like-minded individuals from within and outside of CARICOM (the Caribbean Community), all with a passion for helping people thrive after childhood adversity.