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Dear Student, Recently I noticed you were missing more classes than usual. I wondered and worried about what was going on. You said that you have been trying your best, but you are dealing with many challenges in life right now. Specifically, you explained you have been struggling with anxiety that is ruining everything. You described the cycle of getting overwhelmed by circumstances that exacerbate your anxiety, which in turn makes those circumstances worse. You articulated how difficult it...

It is now more important than ever to teach students the power of empathy. The majority of students in the U.S. education system are now students of color. As classrooms become more diverse, we must be prepared to teach students how to interact and care for one another. Let’s not wait for marches and demonstrations to build along lines of differences, let’s start in each classroom. Creating an empathetic space has allowed my students to take risks, challenge themselves and fully participate...

The Schoolbox Project is a 501(c)(3) organization that provides mobile, trauma informed education, art and play to children in refugee camps throughout Greece. Our volunteers come from around the world to go through our specialized training on how to work with children who have been through trauma and are living in a camp environment. Children in our programs are never excluded or punished for difficult behavior or for disabilities. They are instead given 1:1 support at school and at home...

Elisabeth Corey writes so honestly on her Beating Trauma blog . I'm a huge fan of her writing and advocacy work. This piece, in particular, is amazing. She writes about adult relationships and how they have been impacted deeply and consistently by ACEs in childhood. We know what we have lived. Unlearning and learning new and different things takes time and work. And it helps, that parents like Elisabeth share as they learn. We all benefit from that sharing. Many of us are learning how to...

Creating a supportive environment is helping reduce student behavior issues in Arizona schools and empowering students to pause before they respond instead of reacting to adverse events. Research shows experiencing six or more adverse childhood experiences increases risk factors for chronic diseases, which can reduce a person’s life by up to 20 years, said Marcia Stanton, coordinator of the Adverse Childhood Experience Initiative at Phoenix Children’s Hospital . Adverse childhood experiences...

While a large amount of research has focused on how poverty affects students’ academic achievement, information about the effects of toxic stress and adverse childhood experiences on learning are just coming to the forefront. Some kids “come into a family that has the resources and the support to provide what they need, but, unfortunately, we know many kids don’t,” and spend much of their lives trying to catch up and overcome challenges, said Marcia Stanton, coordinator of the Adverse...

The Attachment & Trauma Network’s 2017 Educating Traumatized Children Summit will feature 18 audio interviews (available as mp3 recordings) exploring the Trauma-Sensitive Schools movement and the latest in understanding the impact of trauma on learning. Teachers, therapists, administrators and parents will all find this series helpful in working with children of trauma. Topics include:  Re-Thinking Children’s Behavior...the Seismic Shift 
  The Importance of Top Administrators’...

Pam Bunyon faced the 4th graders, some splayed in chairs but most arrayed on the rug before her. On the whiteboard, she showed them the outline of a human head. Next to it were some big words for the 9- and 10-year-olds: Cortex . Amygdala . Brain stem . Bunyon, the counselor at Powel Elementary School, was using science to help students understand their impulses and give them strategies to deal with them. “So we don’t flip out,” as she and the class put it. Bunyon took classes on anger,...

The Le Grand Union High School District is comprised of just over 500 students. Dissatisfied with the impact such traditional, punitive discipline was having on the school climate, educators and administrators decided to try a different approach and began to implement a “restorative” model of discipline. Rather than banishing the offending student from school, “restorative” strategies aim to help identify personal or family issues a student may be having that often are the root cause of the...

Students stressed out over impending college acceptance and rejection letters drop by a teacher’s class to spend time brushing the therapy dog in her class just to calm their nerves. At another campus, a first grader practices reading aloud while absentmindedly playing with the ears of a therapy dog that visits his class once a week. Man’s best friend is playing an increasingly important role in maintaining student mental health as more becomes required of students to succeed academically.

This report and accompanying policy brief show that there is good reason to pursue the measurement of social-emotional learning (SEL) and school culture/climate (CC) as a way to better understand student and school performance. Using data from California's CORE districts, we show that SEL and CC measures demonstrate reliability and validity, distinguish between schools, are related to other academic and non-academic measures, and also illuminate dimensions of student achievement that go...

We are trying to scoop water out of a boat which has gaping trauma-holes in the bottom.