Blog

I'm thrilled to announce our NEW Live Chat series!!! Starting in May, once a month, we will have a live Chat Event. It will take online in the Parenting with ACEs Group the second Tuesday of the month at 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST). We'll learn from our featured guests (below) about ACE-related issues. We'll have discussions and share experiences, stories, and resources with each other. Here is who and what we have scheduled for 2017. 2017 Monthly Chat Schedule / Time is Always: @ 10 AM PST (1...

Carla Denner shared an experience with us from the Petaluma City School Board Meeting in March. The topic of discussion was schools being a safe place for all students and those facing immigration issues. She shared with us that she was happy to hear ACES discussed as part of this conversation. Also the wonderful work that Nikki (ACEs fellow) is doing with the Petaluma Schools. Petaluma is an example of a compassionate education system that is working to educate their staff about ACES and...

In California, AB 254 authored by Assemblymember Tony Thurmond (D-Richmond) will ensure access to health and mental health services for all students. The bill passed the Assembly Health Committee this afternoon. “We cannot continue to allow children that suffer from health conditions to fall behind in school and slip between the cracks,” said Thurmond. “All students, regardless of economic circumstances, deserve an opportunity to pursue an education and get the healthcare they need to remain...

As a teacher and teacher-educator for more than a decade, I have had the privilege of working with thousands of educators. Now, in my current capacity as the director of education at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence , part of my job is supporting educators from all over the nation in learning, living, and teaching social and emotional learning (SEL), a set of life skills that support people in experiencing, managing, and expressing their emotions effectively and in fostering...

Grit is an easy concept to fall in love with because it represents hope and perseverance, and conjures up images of working-class individuals living the “American dream.” However, treating grit as an appealing and simple fix detracts attention from the larger structural inequities in schools, while simultaneously romanticizing notions of poverty . Perhaps this idea of grit resonates with so many people who believe in the popular American adage that if you work hard and pull yourself up by...

Rarely do the worlds of medicine and education directly collide in the lives of students, but school start times are a notable exception. Despite compelling scientific evidence that starting school too early in the morning conflicts with the biological shift in teens’ sleep patterns, delaying school start times remains challenging for many districts. Recognizing that early start times are a key, modifiable factor contributing to the public health epidemic of teen sleep deprivation, the...

As a student assistance counselor, I regularly receive flashy emails from various organizations promoting materials for drug-free schools. Secretly I roll my eyes and strike the trash icon. “Drug free schools - ha, right?!” It may sound cynical or jaded that I don’t believe in drug-free high schools. It’s not that. The truth is I don’t believe a drug-free high school exists. This isn’t from a lack of effort or concern. As a product of the “Just Say No” era, schools have worked for decades to...

California education officials last week bragged about the seventh consecutive year of improvement in the statewide high school graduation rate, which reached 83.2 percent for the class of 2016. That was 0.9 percentage point above the previous year. However, behind that omnibus number is a world of variety, both among ethnic groups, school districts and individual high schools. EdSource has created a database that families and educators can use to look up how well their districts and schools...

Back for the second year, Beyond Paper Tigers conference will take place June 28th and 29th in Walla Walla, WA. Featuring Dr. Ken Ginsburg from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia as the keynote speaker, BPT builds on the story of one community and how they've learned that embracing trauma-informed care and implementing ACEs science truly takes a village. Operationalizing the latest in brain science, BPT will provide concrete strategies for intervention with youth, families, and communities...

t Cherokee Point Elementary School, first-grade teacher Hagit Patolai roams her classroom to asses student progress on a “fact versus opinion” writing assignment. She crouches down to read over the shoulder of a boy, asking him to point to the words (beautiful and cool) that indicate his illustrated story about a rainbow is based on his opinions. Why are people’s opinions important, she asks. It’s a question that gets at more than the lesson at hand. Patolai keeps detailed records on the...

Seat-belt use in the United States rose from 14 percent in 1985 to 84 percent in 2011 thanks, in large part, to a massive ad campaign promoting the practice. Even now, with “buckle up” warnings far less prominent, seat-belt use continues to rise . Ronald Ferguson wants to see a similar trend with the use of five evidence-based parenting principles dubbed the Boston Basics : maximize love, manage stress; talk, sing, and point; count, group, and compare; explore through movement and play; and...

Sabrina Astle is a student at Laguna Beach High School. She told ABC News that she “wanted to find a way to make a difference through our Kindness Club on campus.” The school had a spirit week titled “What if…Week,” which is designed to bring students across campus together. Each day of the week has a different message, and Thursday’s was “What if we showed more love?” The 17-year-old had the idea of replacing mirrors in the bathrooms with positive signs of affirmation. So she got to work...