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This opportunity is for schools and districts to receive training to develop an awareness of the prevalence of traumatic experience, its impact on academic behavior and relations and the need for a whole school approach. For the 2019-2020 school year, Carver, Marshfield, Rockland, Scituate and Silver Lake qualified to receive free training from TLPI.

Thanks to Northwest PBIS Network, Inc. for sharing this on Facebook. Jackie Kennon - KCRG.com, Eastern Iowa, November 8, 2019 'No phone, new friends Fridays' is a new tradition at Iowa Valley Junior-Senior High School in Marendo. Principal Janet Behrens started it this year. She says she noticed students at the school with their heads down, looking at their phones. Instead, she wanted them to look at each other, and learn face-to-face communication skills. Students like junior Page Weick say...

In our trauma-informed classrooms blog post last week, we talked about choices. We mentioned the benefit of having a space in the room where a child can go to help them calm down and become regulated. While this has become increasingly common at the elementary level, we have found that this is a tool that can work for students of all ages. Even when we survey adults about the things that help them to calm down when they are upset, one of the most common answers we hear is that they want time...

By Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed, November 5, 2019 A decades-long effort to change how educators talk about students facing economic or social challenges has been backed by California lawmakers. A bill to remove references to “at-risk youth” and replace the term with “at-promise youth” in California’s Education Code and Penal Code was approved by California governor Gavin Newsom in mid-October. The California Education Code is a collection of laws primarily applying to public K-12...

One thing that is common among many traumatic events is a complete lack of choices. When a person feels like they do not have a choice or control, it can be triggering and cause the negative emotions that the person ties to the original trauma. While you can do a lot relationally with how you interact with your students, you can also set up your physical space with choices in mind. As you think about choices in your classroom, here are a couple of options you may want to consider. First of...

What happens when a country decides that one of its most precious natural resources is its children? Finland’s educational system provides a clue. New scores on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD’s) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test are set for release in December 2019 and will draw the attention of education leaders as a measure of which countries best educate their children. How Finland has achieved these results makes it particularly...

By Alysha Conner, Contributing Writer, Los Angeles Sentinel Published October 31, 2019 African-American students in Los Angeles County are currently facing a dual-threat of inadequate educational opportunities and support. It has been proven that social and environmental factors have also placed their educational and social development at significant risk. A recent study published by UCLA graduates exhibits Black students in LA County disproportionately attending schools that the state...

Released last week, the brief “Not Enough Adults to Go Around: Underfunded California Schools Provide Less Support for Kids” compares three similar high schools in California, Illinois, and New Jersey to highlight where dollars are spent and how that translates into actual experiences that benefit students and their success. To read the full brief click here

By Dana Goldstein, The New York Times, October 24, 2019 In a typical week, Adrienne Vaccarezza-Isla, a school counselor in Chicago, might help a dozen eighth graders apply to high schools across the city. Or try to convince a mother that her daughter, who had seen her get shot years earlier, should join a group for students dealing with trauma. Or work with sixth and seventh graders on time management. Even though she is the only counselor for 650 children at Avondale-Logandale Elementary...

By Cory Turner, National Public Radio, October 29, 2019 Childhood anxiety is one of the most important mental health challenges of our time. One in five children will experience some kind of clinical-level anxiety by the time they reach adolescence, according to Danny Pine, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health and one of the world's top anxiety researchers. Pine says that for most kids, these feelings of worry won't last, but for some, they will —...

By Carolyn Jones, EdSource, October 29, 2019 More California schools are allowing disruptive students to serve suspensions on campus instead of sending them home. But experts said educators need to provide those students with high-quality behavior counseling for that approach to be successful. Schools throughout the state have embraced in-school suspensions in recent years, as studies have shown that traditional out-of-school suspensions can hurt students’ academic performance and actually...

Chicago schools chief Janice Jackson traveled to Washington, D.C., Wednesday to deliver a testimony to a House committee about the district’s struggle against forces like poverty and gun violence that affect how students learn and behave in the classroom. The latest police statistics show Chicago crime is down compared with last year, including shootings and murders. But despite the trend, violence still wracks the lives of many Chicagoans, especially youth. Jackson made the point, as did...