Blog

Thursday, June 11, 2020 Education Upended, We're Back! Please join us for the ongoing community discussion of "A Better Normal — Education Upended". We bring bring our focus back to the future. Using our breakout session format, we will identify the strategies and lessons learned that we want to bring into the future of school, and ways in which we might do that. How do we create physical and psychological safety, especially in the face of so much uncertainty? What strategies can we use to...

By Theresa Harrington and Ali Tadayon, EdSource, June 10, 2020 Amid calls to defund municipal police in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police, two Oakland Unified school board members are pushing to eliminate the district’s police force. This is an acceleration of a demand that dates back nine years, when activists began calling on the district to dissolve its police department after a black student was shot and killed by a district police sergeant. The proposal by board...

On June 10, 2020, we will #ShutDownAcademia, #ShutDownSTEM, and #Strike4BlackLives. In the wake of the most recent murders of Black people in the US, it is clear that white and other non-Black people have to step up and do the work to eradicate anti-Black racism. As members of the global academic and STEM communities, we have an enormous ethical obligation to stop doing “business as usual.” No matter where we physically live, we impact and are impacted by this moment in history. Our...

By Cailin O'Connor, 6/10/20, positiveexperience.org/blog ...The Strengthening Families framework identifies five protective factors, but of course there are far more than five possible strengths in people’s lived experiences. These strengths, and the positive experiences they facilitate, profoundly influence a child’s experience of adversity – including by making those adverse experiences less likely, by buffering a child from the negative effects of adversity, by restoring a sense of safety...

White People Need To Own Our Discomfort For those of us who are white, the role we find ourselves occupying is that of white supremacy....As practitioners and trainers we are uniquely positioned to use trauma-informed principles to address historical trauma. READ STORY

A LETTER TO A.M.E.R.I.C.A We have been marching in peace for far too long. We have been protesting for our right to be human for far too long. We have lost our sense of freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness since we were forcefully moved from our home (Africa) to a foreign laboratory land and utilized as guinea pigs. To see how many times we can bleed, shaped, and controlled. To see how many teardrops it takes us to drown. AMERICA: An A bnormal place for brown and black skins to...

How many times have we heard of people who were raped or otherwise violated being accused in their attacker’s trial of not fighting or running away? The survivor, instead of receiving sympathy and justice, is instead bombarded inside the court and out with shame and blame. This article will examine the phenomenon of freezing during trauma and how the polyvagal theory explains this lack of the ability to escape. The Neuroscience of Fear If more judges and juries were aware of the complicated...

Join us as we delve into the paradigm-shifting ethos of trauma-informed care with renowned expert Dr. Megan Gerber. Dr. Gerber is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and serves as Medical Director of Women’s Health for VA Boston where she directs the Women’s Health Fellowship. Dr. Gerber edited the textbook, “Trauma-informed Health Care Approaches: A Guide for Primary Care.” We discuss the framework for trauma-informed universal precautions, as well as bas

By Liora Engel-Smith and Melba Newsome, North Carolina Health News, June 8, 2020 Braxton Winston became a symbol of the Charlotte resistance during the September 2016 protests over the police killing of Keith Lamont Scott when he stripped off his shirt to use as a mask against tear gas and stood face face-to-face with police, clenched fist raised in defiance. Winston has since been elected to the City Council twice but his activism and advocacy have not dimmed. Winston went to Charlotte’s...

By Jim Hickman, California Health Report, June 8, 2020 We need to invest in the safety-net institutions that serve and support our most vulnerable now and during times of crisis. COVID-19 is decimating our fragile, unfunded and outdated safety net, and the vital links between families and their local economic, health and social supports. The pandemic has made “underlying conditions” the new code phrase for the social and health inequities disproportionately impacting black and brown...

By Simone Weichselbaum and Nicole Lewis, The Marshall Project, June 9, 2020 Minneapolis city council members made an historic pledge over the weekend when they vowed to dismantle the local police department and shift money to community-based strategies. The pledge to develop a new system of public safety— supported by a veto-proof majority — follows weeks of protests across the country in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd. Officials in other cities, including New York and Los...

By Laura Packard Tucker, Amy Dworsky, and Molly (Mayer) Van Drunen, Chapin Hall at The University of Chicago, June 2020 The Youth Transitions Partnership (YTP) blends service coordination, intensive case management, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) to help transition age youth in foster care in Alameda County, CA engage with support systems and improve their outcomes. YTP was funded by the Children’s Bureau Youth At-Risk of Homelessness (YARH) grant program. This brief describes the...