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A Public School That Not Only Keeps Children Safe, But Heals [nonprofitquarterly.org]

After the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida earlier this year, schools are at the epicenter of national debates on gun violence and mental health. How can teachers and administrators deal with troubled students? And how can they make schools safer for all? It’s not the first time that schools have been asked to address social problems that originate far outside their hallways. In a nation where more than 40 percent of kids are from low-income families, school teachers and...

Design Thinking for School Leaders: Five Roles and Mindsets That Ignite Positive Change (acsd.org)

"Design is the rendering of intent." What if education leaders approached their work with the perspective of a designer? This new perspective of seeing the world differently is desperately needed in schools and begins with school leadership. Alyssa Gallagher and Kami Thordarson, widely recognized experts on Design Thinking, educational leadership, and innovative strategies, call this new perspective design-inspired leadership —one of the most powerful ways to ignite positive change and...

Developing a Classroom Community Where Students Feel Safe to Talk (acsd.org)

Mathematical discourse is essential for deep mathematical learning. We often spend a lot of time teaching our students how to talk to one another with sentence stems, practiced conversations, and teacher talk moves. However, before we can even teach students how to talk, we must make sure that our classroom is a place where students feel comfortable talking. There are a few things that can be done at the beginning of the school year and throughout the year to make a classroom a safe...

Starting the School Year Optimally

So, the start of the school year is not easy for many students, especially those who have experienced or are experiencing trauma and stress and abuse. And, for those who have experience Big T trauma (immigration issues; fires; floods), the beginning of the academic year may not be easy. I think we have, unfortunately, not recognized the many aspects that need to be considered on the first few days of school. Transitions are not easy and we tend to think that one day orientations, filling out...

Some 350 Florida Leaders Expected to Attend Think Tank with Dr. Vincent Felitti, Co-Principal Investigator of the ACE Study; Expert on ACEs Science

Leaders from across the Sunshine State will take part in a “Think Tank” in Naples, FL, on Monday, August 6, to help create a more trauma-informed Florida. The estimated 350 attendees will include policy makers and community teams made up of school superintendents, law enforcement officers, judges, hospital administrators, mayors, PTA presidents, child welfare experts, mental health and substance abuse treatment providers, philanthropists, university researchers, state agency heads, and...

Writing to Heal (edutopia.org)

As a teacher in an alternative classroom in the Aleutian Islands, I work with many students who have experienced trauma, including drug abuse, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, abuse, and poverty. Driven by a conviction that my greatest responsibility is not helping them pass but helping them better realize their human potential, I teach language arts by focusing on ideas and content aimed at helping them grow emotionally as well as intellectually. I use a Nancy Atwell–inspired writing...

The Relentless School Nurse: Imagine the School Nurse as the Chief Wellness Officer

My summers are spent teaching at Rutgers-Camden School of Nursing in the School Nurse Certificate Program. It is truly one of my most cherished roles and this summer was no exception. Every year I learn alongside my students, all who are adult learners returning to school to meet the state requirements to become school nurses. But truthfully, it is so much more than only meeting course requirements. The students are vulnerable, learning a new nursing specialty, and challenging themselves in...

Trauma can make it hard for kids to learn. Here’s how teachers learn to deal with that. (chalkbeat.org)

There’s no debating that childhood trauma seriously impacts how students learn. Researchers have tied stressful events such as divorces, deportations , neglect, sexual abuse and gun violence to behavioral problems, lower math and reading scores, and poor health. The latest research, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison , finds that children who endure severe stress are more likely to suffer heart attacks and mental health disorders. So, we know trauma affects kids, but how do we teach...

Parents’ Adverse Childhood Experiences and Their Children’s Behavioral Health Problems

Pediatrics, August 2018, VOLUME 142 / ISSUE 2 by Adam Schickedanz, Neal Halfon, Narayan Sastry, Paul J. Chung BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) include stressful and potentially traumatic events associated with higher risk of long-term behavioral problems and chronic illnesses. Whether parents’ ACE counts (an index of standard ACEs) confer intergenerational risk to their children’s behavioral health is unknown. In this study, we estimate the risk of child...

Child Welfare Ideas from the Experts #7: Moving Toward Trauma-Informed Schools [chronicleofsocialchange.org]

The Chronicle of Social Change is highlighting each of the policy recommendations made this summer by the participants of the Foster Youth Internship Program (FYI), a group of 10 former foster youths who have completed congressional internships. The program is overseen each summer by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute. Each of the FYI participants crafted a policy recommendation during their time in Washington, D.C. Today we highlight the recommendation of Ixchel Martinez, 28,...

To Focus On Students' Emotional Well-Being, India Tries 'Happiness Classes' [npr.org]

For the past three weeks, students across India's capital have been attending a radical new course: happiness. The Delhi government introduced "happiness classes" in an effort to shift the country's academic focus from student achievement to emotional well-being. In a country that uses standardized testing to determine student success, offers a limited number of seats in top universities and sets high expectations, educators have been seeing mental health consequences. Delhi's Education...

Preparing teachers to personalize their classrooms (edsource.org)

Teacher residency programs, which are modeled on medical residencies, are growing in popularity as a way to improve teacher effectiveness. Future teachers learn the craft by working for a year with experienced teachers, who provide guidance, feedback and support. But Summit’s program is the first of its kind to prepare teachers to lead classrooms structured around personalized learning, said Pam Lamcke, director of the program. Personalized learning enables students to learn academic content...

Improving California school environments focus of pilot program (edsource.org)

This week the departments of education in Orange and Butte counties, along with UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools, announced a pilot program to develop a training curriculum based on multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS), an approach to learning and behavioral problems in which students progress through a range of interventions depending on their need levels. The program, which is funded by a $15-million grant that was part of the budget deal struck by Gov. Jerry Brown and the...

Teens’ Brains May Be Molded by Living With Neighborhood Violence [jjie.org]

The Conversation Flinching as a gunshot whizzes past your window. Covering your ears when a police car races down your street, sirens blaring. Walking past a drug deal on your block or a beating at your school. For kids living in picket-fence suburbia, these experiences might be rare. But for their peers in urban poverty, they are all too commonplace. More than half of children and adolescents living in cities have experienced some form of community violence — acts of disturbance or crime...

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