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With teaching High School Health, I began using this curriculum in the fall semester 2017. Students are responding to this; asking for it! This engages students and speaks to them at their level. https://www.dibbleinstitute.org/mind-matters-more-details/ How about we front load all students with coping skills for trauma... before trauma hits? We know that everyone will feel the affects of trauma at some point in their life: a car wreak, a divorce, or possibly a death. Happy to answer any...

EVERETT — As you learn to look at something in a different light, it can change the choices you make. When children get into trouble at school, sometimes the root cause is trauma and toxic stress they have experienced outside the classroom doors. If the people who provide care for them — including teachers, principals and social workers — know how to recognize and address that trauma, they can do a better job. They can try to make sure it doesn’t keep the child from growing academically,...

Yuridia Nava, a counselor at Riverside Polytechnic High School in Riverside, Calif., has been getting to work at 7 a.m. lately. It's class registration time, so she wants to be available before school for parents and students to come in with questions as they plan for the next year of courses, SAT tests, and college preparation. Poly — as her school is known — employs six counselors for its 2,700 students, so Nava and her colleagues each work with about 500 teens. That's just above average.

Amplify their voice, not yours. Broadcast your willingness to be a "helper". Assume competence in youth leadership. Don't assume anything else. The moment news spread that the students of Parkland, Florida were using their voices to speak out against school violence, Rep. Shawn Harrison staffer claimed that the students were paid actors. This reaction isn’t uncommon. Some adults in positions of power are hesitant to include youth voice in the public sphere, and some will use any means...

Black male students in rural counties and those in foster care are suspended at some of the highest rates in California, a new report has found. The report also found that the disparity in suspension rates among black male students compared to all students is greatest in kindergarten through the 3rd grade. The report, titled " Get Out! Black Male Suspensions in California Public Schools ," looked at suspensions through the 2016-17 school year. It was authored by J. Luke Wood and Frank Harris...

Throughout my entire K-12 childhood experience, I never once saw anyone who looked like me. Not in any textbook. Not in my teachers' or administrators' faces. There were no role models on television and not one affirming character who looked like me in a novel. I was never taught about a single Asian female of any significance who made any positive contribution to society at all. Much later in life as a 1st grade teacher in my own classroom, I looked at my own classroom library collection...

I wanted to share with you an article I recently published in the Journal of Occupational Therapy, Schools, and Early Intervention titled “Trauma and the role of the school-based occupational therapist”. It is about the important role school-based OT’s can play in addressing trauma, using a sensory-based approach, to support participation and engagement in education. Here is the link. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19411243.2018.1438327

SALISBURY — They’re only 5, 6, 8, 10-years-old — but life has already thrown some elementary school students more punches than they can handle. Rowan County children walk into school every day with the scales stacked against them; bearing the weight of abuse, poverty or community violence — and when one more weight is added to the pile, they break. “The response could be fight or freeze, ” Christy Lockhart, a social worker at Koontz Elementary said. “ And it’s out of their control.”...

When Dustin Gordon's high school invited juniors and seniors to meet with recruiters from colleges and universities, a handful of students showed up. A few were serious about the prospect of continuing their educations, he said, "But I think some of them went just to get out of class." In his sparsely settled community in the agricultural countryside of southern Iowa, "there's just no motivation for people to go" to college, says Gordon, who's now a senior at the University of Iowa. "When...

As a parent, I understand the desire for practical responses to school shootings. I also absolutely believe the government should do more to prevent such incidents. But the gun control debate has proven so divisive and ineffective that I am weary of waiting for politicians to act. I study the kind of aggressive childhood behavior that often predates school shootings. That research suggests what communities and families can start doing today to better protect children. Here are 10 actions we...

She was 3 years old when her father died in a car crash and 17 when her mother committed suicide. In between those bookends of loss, she lived with the man she refers to as “my evil stepfather. ” He demeaned her, her two older sisters and her younger brother, and punished them with a belt when they didn’t meet his exacting standards. To read the full story - click the blue link at the bottom of the post - As the sun fades and her office on the fourth floor of the state Capitol darkens –...

This conference is designed to bring educators, students, parents, pastors, community members, health departments, corrections and any other professions that deal with human capital, to the table of solutions and collaboration. This is Jim Sporleder's first national conference. Jim is the author of Implementing a Trauma-Informed School and the Principal of Lincoln High School in the award winning documentary Paper Tigers. resilience.essdack.org Here's the link to register:...