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By Pamela Cantor, The American Federation of Teachers,, Fall 2021 E ducation has long been central to the promise of the United States of America. But our current education system has never been designed to promote the equitable opportunities or outcomes that our children and families deserve and that our democracy, society, and economy now need. The people who built the education system in the 19th and 20th centuries believed that talent and skills were scarce. They trusted averages as...

The stress, fear, grief and loneliness of the pandemic has weighed hard on school-aged children. A teacher, a parent and a school administrator offer strategies for moving beyond loss to healing.

By Melinda D. Anderson, the Guardian, September 14, 2021 H istory teacher Valanna White filed into the auditorium the first week of August for the customary back-to-school all-staff meeting at Walker Valley high school in Cleveland, Tennessee. What she heard shifted her outlook for the coming school year. On 1 July, a new law took effect banning the teaching of critical race theory in Tennessee public schools. White listened intently as a school district official gave a vague overview...

Our Back To School Edition With RESILIENCE and Play! RESILIENCE on Video On Demand RESILIENCE is now available for streaming directly to individual viewers on Apple TV, Google Play and Vudu. Since its premiere in 2016 at the Sundance Film festival, RESILIENCE has been screened globally, in educational settings, more than 50,000 times. In partnership with many educational, health care, juvenile justice and non-profit organizations, RESILIENCE and Paper Tigers has increased the awareness of...

Introducing our new series Education Upended: Talking Out of Turn . This monthly series will feature a conversation facilitated by Lara Kain, PACEsConnection Education Consultant , with special guests on education related current events and hot topics. We will use a trauma-informed and PACEs science aware lens to examine what is going on K-12 education, what needs changing, and strategies being used in the field to disrupt harmful policies and make positive changes in the system. September...

Photo: Allison Shelley for American Education By Leigh Deal Victoria Our students are suffering from learning loss. … Schools and teachers should do the following to mitigate learning loss: … We must be ready to diagnose our students’ learning loss. … This type of rhetoric has appeared in our news feeds, educational blogs and journals, curricular textbook programs, and most unfortunately, school districts across the nation. Since the pandemic shutdown, the term “learning loss” has...

When thinking about the start of yet another unpredictable and unprecedented school year, the word that keeps repeating itself in my head is “grace.” The dictionary defines grace as “a disposition to or an act or instance of kindness, courtesy, or clemency.” Kindness, compassion, lenience, and mercy. Grace for the educators and all student support staff, grace for our administrators. Grace for our youth, grace for our families, grace for the school board members and policy makers. Our own...

When children encounter police because they were a witness to violence or a traumatic event, they can sometimes show up to school the next few days feeling upset, setting off a cycle of poor school performance or acting out, whether in school in person or virtually. Unless a teacher knows the student experienced recent trauma, the child could end up in trouble instead of receiving support. The District Attorney's Office, the San Diego County Office of Education, local law enforcement, and...

It is with great excitement and enthusiasm that I have accepted the position at PACEsConnection as their full time Trauma-Informed Education Consultant. I have been with PACEsConnection since 2018 in the role of Community Facilitator, supporting cross-sector resilience initiatives in Southern California, managing the PACEs in Education site, and tending to education related topics as time allowed. The dream has always been, even before I started working here in an official role, to have...

The most power is in the conversations and daily practices that occur each day. Each person’s self awareness and developing awareness of how trauma impacts behavior and relationships can provide an opportunity for healing and breaking the cycle of creating more trauma.

Photo: Allison Shelley for American Education By Barnett Berry and Emily Leitag As schools begin to reopen with the specter of the delta variant spiking, lessons from these leading teachers point to how schools need to be reinvented in the face of disruptions in teaching and learning. Here are three specific innovations they have discovered and/or used this past year, representing what these leading teachers hope to see in the future of education. Creating more space for personalized...

Given a high demand this year, we are accepting applications for additional students! 16 Strong Project is excited to be recruiting for our second Youth Advocacy Board! Our goal is to involve youth in our program and resource development as well as provide guidance to this group to be leaders and advocates around ACEs in their own schools and communities. We are looking for a group of creative, resourceful, hard-working high school (grades 9-12) students to join our Youth Advocacy Board who...