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RESILIENCY TEAM TRAINING Cape May & Atlantic County School Districts- Southern NJ Applied Educational Neuroscience, the Brain and Adversity- “Stressed Brains Do Not Learn” Purpose: To provide training for school level teams on the latest research and strategies concerning Educational Neuroscience, the Brain, Stress and Adversity. To create school level “turnkey” teams focusing on the skills and organizational components necessary to create trauma sensitive AND trauma responsive...

Among mental health practitioners, researchers, educators, and even the media, mindfulness practices are gaining popularity as a method to help children and youth cope with stress. A growing body of research suggests that mindfulness interventions in schools can boost children’s ability to regulate emotions and manage their feelings of stress. One evaluation examined a 12-week mindfulness intervention across several elementary schools. Researchers found that students who participated in the...

High school is stressful. Spending hours a day sitting hunched over small desks writing papers and taking notes only to go home and spend even longer working can take its toll on anyone. Not only is your body cramped, but you start to lose focus because you’re stressing over deadlines or upcoming tests. Well, Kofi Charu Nat Turner, a professor at UMass Amherst has a practice for you. It’s called “ Dynamic Mindfulness ” and he has been bringing it to the inner city New Jersey schools for...

Eighteen-year-old Kia Hanson has always enjoyed her time as a youth leader at the East Oakland Youth Development Center (EOYDC). She’s worked mostly with five- and six-year-olds since she began in 2016. Recently, she tapped into new skills, especially if the kids were having a meltdown. Kia Hanson “If they’re off, we ask them, ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘Do you want to talk about anything?’,” she explains. “Basically asking before assuming they’re mad at the world for no reason.” What made the...

"Self-care is proving to be difficult to master and weave into our teachers frantic lives. As human beings we must prioritise our own well-being and as teachers as well we can begin to place the same emphasis on staff well-being in our schools as we do for the mental health of the children we teach. Self-care starts with you and small acts every single day. Imagine connecting to and feeling the magic you work so hard to create in the classroom and in your life. Imagine the impact on those...

[Daun Kauffman photo.] ____________________________________________________________ This morning, I thought about taking a sick day—a mental health day. Yesterday was a rough day in the classroom, a day that ended with a parent-teacher conference after school hours. It was a day that I laid my head on my desk during my planning period and resorted to my hidden candy stash in my bottom desk drawer. This morning, I thought, “I’ll take my first sick day.” I’d been saving them for months, coming...

Last month, an article titled “The Tragedy of Baltimore” in the New York Times Magazine described the upsurge in violence in a city long known for its “blight, suburban flight, segregation, drugs , racial inequality, [and] concentrated poverty.” At the center of the storm are transition-age youth, who too often face long odds and challenging futures in the communities where they live. I recently had the opportunity to talk with Patricia Cobb-Richardson , MS. For the past 20 years, she has...

After years of documented instances of anti-Native racism — including the use of racial slurs and harmful stereotypes by white administrators, faculty, and staff — in a school where 94 percent of Native students are below proficiency in reading, compared to 49 percent of white students, the U.S. Department of Education is starting an investigation into discrimination against Native students in Montana’s Wolf Point School District. Investigators with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office...

Two RAND Corp. studies recently evaluated the use of restorative practices to strengthen relationships between students and teachers to build that connection to school. These include teachers and other adult staff soliciting thoughts and ideas from students when making decisions, such as developing classroom norms; expressing their feelings in response to students’ behavior; encouraging students to express and respect their and others’ feelings; addressing not just bad behavior but also the...

Do you have specialized expertise in trauma-informed care and education? Has your school taken the journal toward becoming trauma-sensitive ? The Attachment & Trauma Network (ATN) is looking for workshop presenters from a variety of backgrounds: educators (at all levels), counselors, social workers, clinicians, community leaders and others to present at our 2020 conference, February 16-18, 2020 in Atlanta, GA. You will be speaking at the LARGEST gathering of trauma-informed educators in...

According to a recent article in Child Trends - A growing body of research suggests that mindfulness interventions in schools can boost children’s ability to regulate emotions and manage their feelings of stress. Educators. and school staff looking for interventions to help students manage stress may want to consider mindfulness programs. These programs, which don’t require any special equipment, can also be relatively inexpensive to implement; school staff can often be trained to become...

"Data shows that more than half of all U.S. children have experienced some kind of trauma in the form of abuse, neglect, violence, or challenging household circumstances—and 35 percent of children have experienced more than one type of traumatic event, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)." "“Being a teacher is a stressful enough job, but teachers are now responsible for a lot more things than just providing education,” says LeAnn Keck, a manager at Trauma Smart...