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The Syracuse City School District is not allowed to send leftovers home with students, due to state law. But for several years, the district has adopted a small-scale but creative, scalable approach to minimizing waste: sharing tables. This is how it works: Every student gets a lunch. If he or she doesn’t want a part of the lunch, such as milk, the student can drop off the milk on a designated table in the lunchroom. Another student who wants a second milk, for example, can then pick up the...

For nearly a century, a massive mural by painter Victor Arnautoff titled “The Life of Washington” has lined the hallways of San Francisco’s George Washington High School . The mural “glorifies slavery, genocide, colonization, manifest destiny, white supremacy [and] oppression.” So said Washington High School’s Reflection and Action Group , an ad-hoc committee formed late last year and made up of Native Americans from the community, students, school employees, local artists and historians.

With graduation season upon us, I have been thinking a lot about one of my favorite graduation speeches. It’s the speech that Shonda Rhimes, creator of Grey’s Anatomy, gave in 2014 at Dartmouth College. She references the typical expected advice from a graduation speech: “Follow your dreams. Listen to your spirit. Change the world. Make your mark. Find your inner voice and make it sing. Embrace failure. Dream. Dream and dream big." And then she says, "I think that's crap."

by David Washburn, EdSource, June 11, 2019. Butte County’s Oroville City Elementary School District, which has a suspension rate that is three times the statewide average, is under state investigation for its discipline policies and practices. The investigation, by the California Bureau of Children’s Justice , is focused on the district’s record of suspending and expelling students and its alternatives to those punishments, according to a district statement . The statement also said the...

By Dan Levin, The New York Times, June 12, 2019. Inside an elementary school classroom decorated with colorful floor mats, art supplies and building blocks, a little boy named Riley talked quietly with a teacher about how he had watched his mother take “knockout pills” and had seen his father shoot up “a thousand times.” Riley, who is 9 years old, described how he had often been left alone to care for his baby brother while his parents were somewhere else getting high. Beginning when he was...

There are many ways to become Trauma Informed, but the most efficient and effective way is to do your own self exploration and then understand your students.

“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in” -Desmond Tutu. This quote captures the essence of why resilience matters. To Community Resilience Initiative, Resilience is not about “lifting yourself up by your bootstraps” or “bouncing back” from serious harm or injury. To us, Resilience is about self-discovery and self-awareness based on what the ACE Study, neurobiology, and epigenetics tell us...

When I joined the Franklin Pierce Early Learning Center a year ago, I was immediately struck by the positive and hopeful atmosphere. I would quickly learn that the school is a Kids at Hope school - believing and practicing that "All Children are Capable of Success, No Exceptions!" Adults at a Kids at Hope school are Treasure Hunters - seeking out the strengths of both the children and adults in the building, as well as within themselves. I soon was connected with Wally Endicott as I prepared...

By Yuxuan Xie a nd Daniel J. Willis , EdSource.org View EdSource's interactive map showing the chronic absenteeism rates for school districts across California. The highest rates are clustered in rural areas. To see the interactive map, go to: https://edsource.org/2019/interactive-map-californias-chronically-absent-students-in-2017-18/613074 And here is an accompanying video: Take a journey into rural Butte County, California where districts are confronting high rates of students missing...

J ennifer Lunzer never felt like she fit in at school. "Art was my safe place where I was good at something and did not have to feel embarrassed about my work," says Lunzer, who has dyslexia. "And growing up dyslexic, no one told me to set my sights high." Now as an artist and also the owner of a successful small business, Josefine's Salon Concepts, Lunzer has incorporated her experiences to create Fitting Together Ar t. The concept is to design an art project in which children, regardless...

HERE this NOW is proud to bring its Trauma-Responsive Schools Conference to California, October 23 – 25, 2019, at the stunning Temecula Creek Inn in Temecula, CA (2 hours north of San Diego; 3-hours south of Los Angeles). This is not a typical conference. Participants will be actively engaged in an immersive experience, rendering more growth - personal and professional. Five diversely skilled and experienced pioneers of trauma-informed schools change are coming together for first time, to...

By Nessia Berner Wong, ChangeLab Solutions. Jaidyn Probst is a high school senior living in Redwood Falls, Minnesota. Redwood Falls is a small, rural town of about 5,000 people — small enough that, according to Jaidyn, everyone knows everyone, which is probably her favorite part. She enjoys creating art, reading, listening to music, and spending time with friends and family. Also, she really doesn’t like doing the dishes. Jaidyn is Bdewakantunwan (Spirit Lake Dwellers) Dakota and comes from...