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Mental health concerns, like anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, can affect a student’s ability to concentrate, form friendships and thrive in the classroom. Educators and school counselors often provide Social and Emotional Learning programs (SEL) in order to help these students, as well as school-based therapeutic support groups. However, even in these forums, getting teenagers to speak about their problems can be challenging, especially when they feel like outsiders...

As Megan Hendrickson finishes her graduation remarks, her already-shaky voice gives way to a flood of tears. Before she can cross the stage and return to her chair, a classmate folds her into a warm hug. Within seconds, 12 students are huddled in a clump, arms wrapped around one another, as they say farewell to a place they’ve come to call home. The ceremony took place at Meristem school, in the Sacramento suburb of Fair Oaks, where adults with autism and other intellectual disabilities...

Lincoln Park Public Schools announced Monday that the district is implementing the Resilient Schools Project, an initiative aimed at reducing the impact of childhood trauma on students. With childhood trauma linked to high-risk behaviors from drug abuse to smoking and from promiscuity to depression, the aim is to increase students’ resilience in the face of the adversities around them. The program builds on a holistic education movement centered on the whole child, inside and outside of the...

The student comes in for a pregnancy test - the second time she's asked for one in matter of weeks. She's 15. She lives with her boyfriend. He wants kids - he won't use protection. She loves him, she says. But she doesn't want to get pregnant. She knows how much harder it would be for her to finish high school. At many schools, she would have gotten little more than some advice from a school nurse. But here at Anacostia High School in Washington, D.C., she gets a dose of midwife Lorel...

Despite some incremental progress, Los Angeles Unified officials continue to “evade” the requirement of the state’s education funding formula to spend substantially more on schools serving low-income children and other students who generate additional revenue for the district, authors of a study released on Tuesday wrote. In their fourth annual analysis of spending in the state’s largest school district, the United Way of Greater Los Angeles and Communities of Los Angeles Student Success, a...

Schools across the country are moving away from an era of zero-tolerance policies and shifting toward methods that involve restorative justice, encouraging students to resolve their differences by talking to each other rather than resorting to violence. In New York City, five schools that have implemented this system are already seeing results. NewsHour Weekend's Megan Thompson reports. In a 9th grade civics class in Brooklyn, New York, Erica Wright is encouraging students to talk to each...

It started as an answer to a youth-led campaign. Young people in arts programs in San Francisco Bay Area schools had produced spoken word videos about inequities in their communities that helped put them at risk for type 2 diabetes. Dr. Jean Junior The response by their peers was enormous, according to Dr. Jean Junior, who volunteered for the project as a pediatric resident at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). “Young people would say ‘You’ve actually gotten me interested.

Although cyberbullying causes the same effects in children as regular, in-person bullying, the problem isn’t always taken seriously. Less than 1 in 5 cyberbullying incidents are reported to law enforcement, and not everyone has the ability to pursue a civil lawsuit. It’s never too late to learn about cyberbullying and how to help prevent it. Find out more about what our kids are facing on the Internet here . To view Janelle's infographic, please click here.

There are many aspects of my more than decade-long career as a teacher that I'm proud of. My reputation for giving lots of homework is not one of them. When I entered a doctoral program in education policy, I learned about the research that suggests that homework is not good for young kids. Not only does it fail to improve the academic performance of elementary students, but it might actually be damaging to kids' attitudes toward school and to their physical health . What are some of the...

For the Special Issues in Grieving and Loss class that I started last month, I was asked to write an informal paper and explain why I chose to enroll in this class, what outcomes I expected and what my goals were. Three years ago, I enrolled in the M.S. in Guidance and Counseling program at STU after one of my students attempted suicide, and nothing had been done by support staff or administration who had been informed of his intentions, to prevent it. I’ve been wanting to take the training...

Meg's nap meant she missed an in-class essay, but she turned it in that night. "I didn't beat her up about it. Didn't have to," he wrote. "In a different room, Meg may have been written up for sleeping in class and given a zero for missing and essay, but she wasn't in a different room; she was in my room." "I think too often the biggest thing that people forget about high school students is that they are kids," Syrie says. "They're kids — kids who are having to grow up way too fast and are...

Cousins says she is “not a book person.” During her childhood of dealing with family strife, which took her to towns across rural Maine, rarely staying at a school for longer than a year or two, learning was never a priority. “It was never something I looked forward to — all day, every day,” she said. She dropped out shortly after her 16th birthday. But last summer, Cousins’ mother-in-law told her about Threshold, a program developed by a Maine charter school aimed specifically at students...