Blog

The theme of trauma was selected for this year’s annual summer Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) Day because “clergy responses to trauma an have a significant impact on our own healing and in healing our communities,” as described in the planning committee welcome letter. Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore hosted the gathering of over 100 pastoral students from the Maryland, Washington, DC, and Northern Virginia region. Planning Committee Chair Ty Crowe, director of the Hospital’s Spiritual...

An article published today by the Hawaii Tribune Herald states that the state of Hawaii is seeking input from residents to assist in creating an updated strategic plan for the public school system. There was a meeting held today (the same day the article came out), and there is another meeting slated for August 24th from 4:30 - 6:30 at Waiakea High School in Hilo. This could be a great opportunity to ask the state to address adverse childhood experiences in their education goals. The full...

Catholic schools for Native Americans, known for abuse and assimilation, try to do good By Naomi Schaefer Riley - Washington Post “The majority of the kids I went to school with are dead,” says Manny Jules, “because of the experience they had, the abuse.” Jules, 63, is the former chief of the Kamloops band of First Nations in British Columbia. As a child, he attended a residential Catholic school, where he remembers students experiencing physical, sexual and emotional abuse while separated...

Kindergarten teacher Erica Nunemaker ripped down the clip chart she used for behavior management in her classroom. Children moved their clip up for good behavior and down for bad behavior. Nunemaker realized the same students were moving down every day. The clip was a public display of the student’s failure, and children weren’t learning how to fix their behavior. “I’ve noticed that a lot of times we discipline them and tell them that’s not right ... but then we don’t give them a solution to...

Fewer students are using drugs and alcohol, but more feel harassed and bullied, a new health survey found. The California Healthy Kids Survey, done every two years since 1985, asked more than 36,000 middle and high school students across the state about campus safety, substance use, mental health and other issues. The California Department of Education and the California Department of Health Care Services coordinated the report, which takes a random sample of seventh-, ninth- and 11th-grade...

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck , along with other education researchers interested in growth mindset, have done numerous studies showing that when students believe their intelligence can grow and change with effort, they perform better on academic tests. These findings have sparked interest and debate about how to encourage a growth mindset in students both at home and at school. Now, a national study of tenth-graders in Chile found student mindsets are correlated to achievement on...

A new online knowledge center offers expert information on supporting the mental health and emotional well-being of students of color. It was created by the Steve Fund, a nonprofit focused on student of color mental health issues and is available free of charge. “Our goal is to provide carefully vetted information on how to better support the mental health and emotional well-being of students of color,” says Evan Rose, president of the Steve Fund, adding: “We are thrilled to launch this new...

Last summer, the high-school English teacher T.J. Whitaker revised the reading list for his contemporary literature course with the addition of a new title— The Savage City , a gritty nonfiction account of race and murder in New York City in the 1960s. The 24-year teaching veteran said he chose the book to give his students at Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, a chance to read “an honest depiction of the Black Panther Party and the corruption that existed in the NYPD during the...

Are we all born with a stable, unchanging level of intelligence? Or can we grow smarter through study and hard work? New research from South America suggests a student’s answer to that question can hugely impact how well they do in school — particularly if they come from poverty. “Students’ mindsets may temper, or exacerbate, the effects of economic disadvantage,” a group of researchers led by Susana Claro of Stanford University writes in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

I started my career as a preschool teacher. For 13 years, I helped 3- to 5-year-old children learn how to write their name; count, sort and use other foundational math concepts; manage their toileting and dressing independently; and meet other easily-observable school-readiness milestones. The children were flourishing, and their families were delighted with their achievements! But woven throughout the multi-faceted learning experiences supporting cognitive, language, physical, and self-help...

Strengthen city support for schools. Empower parents and community members. Increase access to and opportunities for neighborhood resources. Those are the three most important things that Philadelphia residents want from Mayor Jim Kenney's community schools initiative, findings based on months of discussions with stakeholders and the Mayor's Office of Education. On Wednesday the office released a report on its findings after 14 roundtable discussions with principals, teachers, students,...

On the first day of kindergarten every year, public school teachers and administrators stand at their school portals with arms opened wide to embrace every child. Teachers comfort every student readying their cerebral blank slate to be filled with the three R’s — reading, writing and arithmetic. There is only one problem. Kids don’t come to kindergarten with a tabula rasa mind, a blank slate of perceptions, ideas, thoughts and emotions. This may be true for the three R’s, but the experiences...