In an era of “us” and “them,” be an “other” -- someone trying to understand how we all live together. Journalism about the multicultural nation America will become -- with Otherhood, a PRI podcast created and hosted by Rupa Shenoy. [To listen to this podcast by Rupa Shenoy, go to https://www.pri.org/programs/otherhood/why-its-so-hard-talk-about-racism-happens-school ]
Coaching helps people tap into their potential, unlocking sources of creativity and productivity.” Positive results in the areas of “improved communication, increased self-esteem/self-confidence, increased productivity, optimized individual and team performance ”
Sept. 30, 2016 was a big day for Lake Canyon Elementary. Students, teachers, and staff arrived at the Galt, California, school wearing white shirts and before long were sent to stand by one of six large cardboard boxes. After a drum roll, cannons sprayed confetti over each cluster of students. The color matched one of six new banners, like the orange one reading “Sebete” and featuring a bear meant to symbolize courage. As music played, the boxes were ripped open to reveal matching T-shirts.
The destruction of our inner selves via the wired world is an even more recent, and more subtle, phenomenon. The loss of slowness, of time for reflection and contemplation, of privacy and solitude, of silence, of the ability to sit quietly in a chair for fifteen minutes without external stimulation — all have happened quickly and almost invisibly. A hundred and fifty years ago, the telephone didn’t exist. Fifty years ago, the Internet didn’t exist. Twenty-five years ago, Google didn’t exist.
At the recent “Get Lit – Words Ignite” Classic Slam poetry competition, Learn4Life (L4L) students throughout California demonstrated that they have the knowledge and eloquence to Shed Light and Motivate (SLAM) their communities to take action. Hailed as the world’s largest youth poetry slam, the event took place April 26-28 th in downtown Los Angeles and included seven L4L squads and 36 total teams. Get Lit – Words Ignite is an organization that uses poetry to “increase literary, empower...
The Relentless School Nurse: Speaking Truth to Power in a Collaborative Op-Ed The power of social media cannot be underestimated! A few short months ago, I connected with Sunny Hallowell, PhD, RN, a Nurse Faculty from Villanova University on Twitter. Sunny had just returned from Florida where she was presenting Nursing Rounds at a Miami hospital the day of the Parkland shootings. When she returned home, her 5-year-old son shared his experience during his school’s active shooter drill. Sunny...
The Relentless School Nurse: Speaking Truth to Power in a Collaborative Op-Ed The power of social media cannot be underestimated! A few short months ago, I connected with Sunny Hallowell, PhD, RN, a Nurse Faculty from Villanova University on Twitter. Sunny had just returned from Florida where she was presenting Nursing Rounds at a Miami hospital the day of the Parkland shootings. When she returned home, her 5-year-old son shared his experience during his school’s active shooter drill. Sunny...
School officials have issued warnings to parents ahead of the second season of the Netflix drama "13 Reasons Why," which premieres this week. The first season, which centered on the suicide of a high school student, triggered cautions from the National Association of School Psychologists. Netflix has responded to concerns by adding PSA-style messages filmed by the cast and putting up a web site with links to resources. The national attention comes at a time when, new research suggests, one...
Beyond Consequences is excited to announce that our Call for Proposals for the 2018 Fall Trauma-Informed School Conference has been extended. If you have a great story to share about your experience in working with students who’ve had adverse childhood experiences, we would love to hear from you! Here are some examples of sessions that fit in at our nationally recognized conference: Administrative/School-Wide Track • Mindfulness Instead of Suspension • Special Education Law & Advocacy •...
A teenage brain is a fascinating, still-changing place. There's a lot going on: social awareness, risk-taking, peer pressure; all are heightened during this period. Until relatively recently, it was thought that the brain was only actively developing during childhood, but in the last two decades, researchers have confirmed that the brain continues to develop during adolescence — a period of time that can stretch from the middle school years into early adulthood. "We were always under the...
Aside from the students, there isn't much to suggest that this might be a classroom. It certainly doesn't look like one. Instead of in rows of desks, students sit at tables, on couches, or along padded benches that look like they came straight out of a restaurant. There are treadmills in a corner. It's quiet reading time, and a girl with crayon-colored hair pulls out a large blue book with Alcoholics Anonymous written in gold on the spine. This is Independence Academy in Brockton,...
The two 9th-grade girls heard the laughing the minute they walked into their third-period class that December morning at Oakland’s Fremont High School. And they knew why: a video of one of the girls being slapped by a classmate had gone viral among students on social media. It was one of those moments that could have gone bad in a hurry — like so many others had at Fremont High, a school that had more suspensions last year than any other in the Oakland Unified School District. Both girls...
Claudia Rojas had a regular routine she followed most days during the 2012-13 school year, the year she took a job as one of three principals at the newly opened Augustus F. Hawkins High School in South Los Angeles. She would get up in the morning, have breakfast and then cry her way to work. Hawkins, as it’s known, is a part of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Pilot School program , which was established in 2007 to relieve overcrowding at Belmont High School in central L.A. The...
Janai Mestrovich (BS/MS, Family & Child Development), teacher and developer of 'Superkid Power' (Ashland, OR) passed this along to me regarding how she uses finger activated mood card to measure temperature and kid stress levels: 40 Pre-K children learned how to measure their stress level this morning by measuring hand temp. with mood cards. Blue, happy-peaceful-very calm; Green, calm; Red, tight muscles/upset; Black Tense/grit teeth. We chanted and drummed appropriately - tense drumming...
What happens when you don’t blame kids for bad behavior? An elementary school in Columbus, Ohio is trying to find out. Katherine Reynolds Lewis writes: The Ohio-based photographer Maddie McGarvey spent a couple days at Ohio Ave recently meeting and spending time with the students, teachers, and administration trying to shift teachers’ perspective on trauma and their relationships with children. “How are [the children] going to learn a positive way of dealing with conflict if we’re not the...