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(Calif.) With an important legislative deadline quickly approaching, Senate education committee members passed about a dozen bills last week targeting topics including time off for teen parents, statewide assessment options and charter school transparency. AB 1951 would require the State Superintendent of Public Instruction to approve a nationally recognized high school assessment–such as the SAT or ACT–that districts can administer to students instead of the grade 11 California Assessment...

Hosted by EdSource and The Education Trust—West and recorded March 21, 2018, this video conference looks at how to define education equity and what California schools and districts can do to close achievement and opportunity gaps for their students. The discussion was moderated by Louis Freedberg, executive director of EdSource and Ryan J. Smith, executive director of The Education Trust—West. It featured a panel of education experts and practitioners with deep engagement and experience in...

Emotional development in schools is integral to the way that students develop academically, and it also sets them up to be responsible, caring citizens once they reach adulthood. Not only that, but having the ability to empathize with others has been shown to reduce aggression in problem children and reduce incidences of bullying in school. It’s a notion that educator and author Mary Gordon is intimately familiar with. As the founder and executive director of Roots of Empathy , she’s devoted...

Here is a link to a piece on how the small things teachers and coaches do (often unintentionally) affect us negatively for decades. Solutions and suggestions offered. We need to ponder more the message we get too from children's games. Their affect, like the affect of teachers and coaches and other educators, cannot be ignored. https://medium.com/@KarenGrossEdu/sadly-we-remember-the-bad-stuff-teachers-said-and-did-when-we-were-young-94d20e8d5b97

As we celebrate July 4 th , Independence Day, a day typically filled with cookouts, fireworks, parades, and honor of past sacrifices made, my thoughts are drawn to the 1,000’s of classrooms filled with students seeking their own personal independence. Unfortunately, due to the interruption of trauma in childhood, they have become dependent on the maladaptive responses they have acquired in order to mitigate, compensate, cope and survive the impact of the adversity dealt them. Dysregulated...

This past school year Every Neighborhood Partnership (ENP) had a great opportunity to collaborate with two Fresno Unified Elementary schools, Fresno State, Fresno City College and Alliant International University to pilot two unique programs that help to build resiliency and social-emotional life skills. Through this collaborative partnership, ENP was able to facilitate two evidence-based programs that help students to build and develop social and emotional life skills through yoga and...

When educators and coaches make kids feel like they matter, it reduces delinquency and destructive behavior. A new study led by a University of Kansas researcher reveals the importance of non-family adults in mentoring youth. "If you are made to feel useful and important to others, especially in this case by a non-kin and education-based mentor, then you are more likely to have a reduction in delinquency and dangerous behavior," said Margaret Kelley, associate professor of American Studies.

Teaching self and mutual respect to eliminate bullying

To read more of Catherine Porter 's article, please click here .

Beth Jameson, Ph.D., RN, NJ-CSN is a Nurse Scientist with a newly minted Ph.D. from Rutgers University. I was fortunate to meet Beth when she was in the midst of her dissertation research, which included interviewing school nurses about job satisfaction. I will never forget our intense and honest discussion when I shared my frustration with feeling like a “caged bird” at school. In fact, it was so eye-opening that I wrote a blog post called “The Tale of the Caged Bird.” Beth and I bonded...

On AB 1808: "Emphasized under that umbrella will be restorative justice, social emotional learning and other alternatives that focus on mediation and building healthy relationships over traditional punishments."

California plans to spend $13.3 million over six years to identify and replicate successful ingredients of community engagement, an essential but, for many school districts, elusive part of local control — the shorthand for setting budgeting and academic priorities under the state’s school financing law. The new money — included in the 2018-19 budget — will fund a network that eventually will reach as many as 80 districts. The funding represents the first substantial state effort to...