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“I don’t know if I can do this anymore, Kris. I am just so discouraged.” I sit with my dear friend on a sticky summer night trying to get my gut right. “Gut wrench” is an apt description. It’s invaded my body and overwhelmed my mind. I can’t think straight, see straight, see a way out. The darkness pervading her porch has met my inner ache and it’s threatening to overwhelm my composure. I am choking back a watershed of tears as I open my mouth to speak. I am trying to conjure the words to...

“I just wish I had an adult to talk to.” That was the response of over 80 percent of teenagers in a survey commissioned by Laura Porter when asked: If you could have one helpful thing in your life, what would it be? Porter, a former county commissioner in Washington state is now the co-founder of ACE Interface , an organization that provides schools and communities with the tools to combat childhood trauma. The survey was part of her research to get a handle on what was happening with young...

This fall, Lara Kain and I will co-present a 3 night / 4 day retreat-style training - The Trauma-Informed School 2.0 - in the Monadnock Region of New Hampshire. The format and content of this training promises to be unlike most. Lara and I purposely embedded in the training format experiences that reflect the principles of trauma-informed care (i.e. exercises and activities that cultivate psychological safety, connection among participants, and emotional regulation). Participants will learn...

Candida Rodriguez is my mentor, while she may disagree with that statement and say it is the opposite, it is the absolute truth. My respect, admiration, and amazement at the depth of her knowledge, talent, and compassion astound me every time we work together. Candida serves her complex and ever-changing community with dedication, skill and a relentless pursuit of coordinating care for her students and families. We are partners in the Community Cafe Initiative that began in 2015 after I...

Discover the ways trauma-informed practices, social emotional learning, and positive behavioral interventions and supports complement one another. School leaders will learn how to shift current PBIS practices to reflect a trauma-informed mindset and best support students. Identify ways to adjust referral forms and access our ready-to-use, trauma-informed Student Support Form. Download free white paper | PDF from ASCD Whitepaper Library Click HERE for the white paper on MoveThisWorld's website.

The unique teaching model, piloted in Minneapolis, focuses on students' strengths and teachers' relationship with the classroom. The Building Assets, Reducing Risks program, known as BARR, was started by a Minneapolis school counselor in 1999, and remained in relative obscurity for a decade. Since 2010, its creator, Angela Jerabek, has sought research support to test the BARR program in other schools. The BARR mantra—"Same Students. Same Teachers. Better Results"—has led Jerabek to...

I usually love the fall, anticipation of cooler days, the beauty of the leaves changing, back to school excitement and all that comes with a new season. That was true until the fall of 2009. There are events that mark before and after periods when life is irrevocably changed. In September of 2009, that moment came via the most unwanted phone call. My father had experienced, what the doctor called a “life-ending event”. The days leading up to and following his death are a blur, the impact...

Grief is universal. It is in the kindergarten classroom when a class pet dies, the sixth grade that reads A Bridge to Terabithia , and the college history seminar in which students and teachers parse texts from the Holocaust. Research suggests that seven out of 10 teachers have a student in their classroom who is bereaved or actively grieving, and teachers carry their own losses too, yet mortality is often left out of discourses surrounding social and emotional learning and teacher training.

Join us for a free webinar that focuses on creative expression and how it helps kids with high ACE's scores develop coping mechanisms and build SEL skills.

There’s an old adage, “You can’t pour from an empty cup.” But as a paraprofessional in Chicago, my cup is almost drained. Each day, I provide academic, emotional, and behavioral support for over 200 students. The amount of mental and emotional energy it takes to calm a single student down, redirect or remove them from the class, and provide appropriate consequences is overwhelming — even with experience — when there are 11 other six-year-olds in a classroom that need my help. I look forward...

In January 2016, my school embarked on a journey to pursue a trauma-informed approach to education primarily because the research and brain science is clear that trauma impacts brain development, behavior, academics, and even health outcomes. In addition, what we were doing was not working for anyone―our students or our staff. Our early conversations always included Dr. Beth Schroeder, our school counselor. She, like most school counselors, is an expert on intervention and supporting the...

For as long as he can remember, Angel has missed the beginning of the school year in Texas because his family stays in North Dakota through the harvest. It's weather-dependent, so there's no hard end; all Angel knows is they'll head home to Texas sometime in October or November. That flexibility is a big deal for employers who rely on seasonal workers to quickly harvest and process crops before they spoil. But it puts workers' kids — more than 300,000 of them nationwide, according to the...