Safe Schools & Communities Resources and Research

[Selected quote] "Astor has found many schools that serve low-income families that beat the odds. In them, the social emotional and climate plan was integrated with academics. Improving climate wasn’t done through a one-off program or through efforts independent of a school’s academic program."...

http://hechingerreport.org/dont-walk-that-line-why-schools-need-to-create-and-measure-positive-climates/ 

By Jane Meredith Adams

"A new California law requiring 7th- through 12th-grade students to be educated about sexual harassment and assault will enter its first full year of implementation this fall, and experts and advocates say schools have the opportunity to address troubling attitudes about gender and power that they say can contribute to sexual harassment and even assaults on college campuses.

Many school cultures trivialize harassment, tolerate language that degrades girls and women, and leave unchallenged the misconception that masculinity means being superior and aggressive and femininity means being inferior and submissive, said Erin Prangley, associate director of government relations for the American Association of University Women, a Washington, D.C.-based research and policy organization. These unchecked attitudes emerge at an early age and help create a mindset that, at the college level, has the potential to contribute to sexual assaults, such as the case of Brock Turner at Stanford University, she said.

“The problems that have been very high-profile in the campus sexual assault arena aren’t problems in a vacuum,” Prangley said, without referring to the specific circumstances of the Turner assault.

“A lot of these assaults are symptoms of how children were socialized to be in relationships with other children and, ultimately, with intimate partners,” said Emily Austin, director of advocacy services at the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault, a Sacramento-based nonprofit organization.

In a 2011 study, the American Association of University Women found that nearly half – 48 percent – of about 2,000 7th- through 12th-graders in a nationally representative survey said they experienced some form of harassment based on their gender during the school year. The harassment included unwelcome sexual comments and gestures, being shown sexual pictures they did not want to see, being touched in an unwelcome sexual way and being forced to do something sexual. Girls were more likely to experience sexual harassment than boys.

While there is no single profile of a student who sexually assaults others, sexual harassment by definition is about gender and power, and students who engage in that behavior are likely to have issues with both, said Dorothy Espelage, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researcher on bullying and sexual violence. Those issues, she said, may include a personal or cultural belief that men should hold a dominant position over women in society, a conviction that gender roles must be strictly defined and a concern about being perceived as not masculine enough.

“In our work, the idea that girls should succumb to boys and that boys should call the shots – and be stoic and traditionally masculine – is associated with higher rates of sexual harassment,” Espelage said.

Power and gender identity come to the fore in middle school when girls and boys take stock of their relative status as social and sexual beings. In a study of nearly 1,000 5th, 6th and 7th grade students, Espelage and her colleagues found that the combination of high rates of bullying and high rates of homophobic name-calling – using words such as “homo, gay, lesbo or fag”– was a predictive indicator of which middle school boys were most likely to sexually harass other students over a two-year period, according to results published in 2015 in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

The findings do not imply that bullying leads to rape, according to a research brief on Espelage’s work published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Instead, the findings suggest the need for schools to explicitly address and forbid homophobic teasing and sexual harassment, the authors said.

“Unlike flirting or good-natured joking, which are mutual interactions between two people, sexual harassment is unwelcomed and unwanted behavior which may cause the target to feel threatened, afraid, humiliated, angry, or trapped,” according to the National Women’s Law Center’s primer on sexual harassment for students. In the school environment, sexual harassment includes unwanted sexual behavior – such as sending sexual notes, grabbing body parts, spreading sexual rumors or making sexual gestures, jokes, or verbal comments  – that interferes with a student’s opportunity to obtain an education, according to the law center. Sexual harassment may occur electronically or in person.

It is also against the law in federally funded schools under Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972, as reiterated in a 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. “Sadly, I think most people don’t know that Title IX applies to sexual harassment and sexual assault, and not just to sports,” said Rebecca Peterson-Fisher, senior staff attorney at Equal Rights Advocates, a San Francisco-based nonprofit legal organization."... 

For full post, please click on title above or here: https://edsource.org/2016/experts-say-schools-must-do-more-to-address-early-signs-of-sexual-harassment/565945 

This presentation was created for a Town Hall Meeting at Oak Grove High School (March 26th, 2015).

Slides and links are available at: https://www.haikudeck.com/bullying-prevention-education-presentation-QQUoZhcTCf#slide0 

"This is the first blog in the Childhood Trauma Blog Series, sponsored by Starr TLC.

With grief, sadness is obvious. With trauma, the symptoms can go largely unrecognized because it shows up looking like other problems: frustration, acting out, difficulty concentrating, following directions or working in a group. Often students are misdiagnosed with anxiety, behavior disorders or attention disorders, rather than understanding the trauma that’s driving those symptoms and reactions.

For children who have experienced trauma, learning can be a big struggle. But once trauma is identified as the root of the behavior, we can adapt our approach to help kids cope when they’re at school. Detroit-based clinical director of the National Institute for Trauma and Loss in Children, a program of the Starr Global Learning Network, Caelan Kuban Soma offers these tips for understanding kids who have been through trauma, plus strategies for helping them.

1. Kids who have experienced trauma aren’t trying to push your buttons.
If a child is having trouble with transitions or turning in a folder at the beginning of the day, remember that children may be distracted because of a situation at home that is causing them to worry. Instead of reprimanding children for being late or forgetting homework, be affirming and accommodating by establishing a visual cue or verbal reminder to help that child. “Switch your mind-set and remember the kid who has experienced trauma is not trying to push your buttons,” says Soma.

2. Kids who have been through trauma worry about what’s going to happen next.
A daily routine in the classroom can be calming, so try to provide structure and predictability whenever possible. Since words may not sink in for children who go through trauma, they need other sensory cues, says Soma. Besides explaining how the day will unfold, have signs or a storyboard that shows which activity—math, reading, lunch, recess, etc.—the class will do when.

3. Even if the situation doesn’t seem that bad to you, it’s how the child feels that matters.
Try not to judge the trauma. As caring teachers, we may unintentionally project that a situation isn’t really that bad, but how the child feels about the stress is what matters most. “We have to remember it’s the perception of the child … the situation is something they have no control over, feeling that their life or safety is at risk,” says Soma. It may not even be just one event, but the culmination of chronic stress—for example, a child who lives in poverty may worry about the family being able to pay rent on time, keep their jobs or have enough food. Those ongoing stressors can cause trauma. “Anything that keeps our nervous system activated for longer than four to six weeks is defined as post-traumatic stress,” says Soma.

4. Trauma isn’t always associated with violence.
Trauma is often associated with violence, but kids also can suffer trauma from a variety of situations—like divorce, a move, or being overscheduled or bullied. “All kids, especially in this day and age, experience extreme stress from time to time,” says Soma. “It is more common than we think.”

5. You don’t need to know exactly what caused the trauma to be able to help.
Instead of focusing on the specifics of a traumatic situation, concentrate on the support you can give children who are suffering. “Stick with what you are seeing now—the hurt, the anger, the worry,” Soma says, rather than getting every detail of the child’s story. Privacy is a big issue in working with students suffering from trauma, and schools often have a confidentiality protocol that teachers follow. You don’t have to dig deep into the trauma to be able to effectively respond with empathy and flexibility.

6. Kids who experience trauma need to feel they’re good at something and can influence the world.
Find opportunities that allow kids to set and achieve goals, and they’ll feel a sense of mastery and control, suggests Soma. Assign them jobs in the classroom that they can do well or let them be a peer helper to someone else. “It is very empowering,” says Soma. “Set them up to succeed and keep that bar in the zone where you know they are able to accomplish it and move forward.” Rather than saying a student is good at math, find experiences to let him or her feel it. Because trauma is such a sensory experience, kids need more than encouragement—they need to feel their worth through concrete tasks.

7. There’s a direct connection between stress and learning.
When kids are stressed, it’s tough for them to learn. Create a safe, accepting environment in your classroom by letting children know you understand their situation and support them. “Kids who have experienced trauma have difficulty learning unless they feel safe and supported,” says Soma. “The more the teacher can do to make the child less anxious and have the child focus on the task at hand, the better the performance you are going to see out of that child. There is a direct connection between lowering stress and academic outcomes.”

8. Self-regulation can be a major challenge for students suffering from trauma.
Some kids with trauma are growing up with emotionally unavailable parents and haven’t learned to self-soothe, so they may develop distracting behaviors and have trouble staying focused for long periods. To help them cope, schedule regular brain breaks. Tell the class at the beginning of the day when there will be breaks—for free time, to play a game or to stretch. “If you build it in before the behavior gets out of whack, you set the child up for success,” says Soma. A child may be able to make it through a 20-minute block of work if it’s understood there will be a break to recharge before the next task.

9. It’s OK to ask kids point-blank what you can do to help them make it through the day.
For all students with trauma, you can ask them directly what you can do to help. They may ask to listen to music with headphones or put their head on their desk for a few minutes. Soma says, “We have to step back and ask them, ‘How can I help? Is there something I can do to make you feel even a little bit better?’”

10. You can support kids with trauma even when they’re outside your classroom.
Loop in the larger school. Share trauma-informed strategies with all staff, from bus drivers to parent volunteers to crossing guards. Remind everyone: “The child is not his or her behavior,” says Soma. “Typically there is something underneath that driving that to happen, so be sensitive. Ask yourself, ‘I wonder what’s going on with that kid?’ rather than saying, ‘What’s wrong with the kid?’ That’s a huge shift in the way we view kids.”...

http://www.weareteachers.com/blogs/post/2016/02/24/10-things-about-childhood-trauma-every-teacher-needs-to-know# 

By Katrina Schwartz

"Students’ behavior is a form of communication and when it’s negative it almost always stems from an underlying cause. There are many reasons kids might be acting out, which makes it difficult for a teacher in a crowded classroom to figure out the root cause. But even if there was time and space to do so, most teachers receive very little training in behavior during their credentialing programs. On average, teacher training programs mandate zero to one classes on behavior and zero to one courses on mental health. Teacher training programs mostly assume that kids in public schools will be “typical,” but that assumption can handicap teachers when they get into real classrooms.

A National Institute of Health study found that 25.1 percent of kids 13-18 in the US have been diagnosed with anxiety disorders. No one knows how many more haven’t been diagnosed. Additionally between eight and 15 percent of the school-aged population has learning disabilities (there is a range because there’s no standard definition of what constitutes a learning disability). Nine percent of 13-18 year-olds have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (although the number one misdiagnoses of anxiety is ADHD), and 11.2 percent suffer from depression.

“So basically we have this gap in teacher education,” said Jessica Minahan, a certified behavior analyst, special educator, and co-author of The Behavior Code: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Teaching the Most Challenging Students. She spoke to educators gathered at a Learning and the Brain conference about strategies that work with oppositional students.

Minahan is usually called into schools to help with the most challenging behavior. She finds that often teachers are trying typical behavioral strategies for a group of kids for whom those strategies don’t work. However, she says after teachers learn more about why kids are behaving badly there are some simple strategies to approach defiant behavior like avoiding work, fighting, and causing problems during transitions with more empathy."...

For full post, please see: https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/04/21/20-tips-to-help-de-escalate-interactions-with-anxious-or-defiant-students/ 

BY Meredith Kolodner, Hechinger Report
"NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Having racked up multiple up absences and missed assignments, a high school sophomore showed up in his English class last year, hopeful for another chance. “Where have you been?” his teacher asked. “You can’t pass this class if you don’t show up.” Without warning, the young man exploded.

“Shut the f— up,” the 16-year-old shouted. “You think you’re better than me? Who the f— do you think you are?” He stormed out of the room.

As the screaming and the swearing escalated in the hall, the Metropolitan Business Academy principal, Judith Puglisi, was called. She approached the student. “What do you need?” she asked in an almost-whisper. He kept yelling and pacing, and Puglisi walked with him, she recalled.

After she quietly repeated her question close to a dozen times, he turned to her and said, “I need to come to your office.” There, Puglisi and the assistant principal listened to him shout until he began to cry, telling them that his stepfather had beaten him since he was 7. “I am sick of people calling me a loser,” he said.

The student was not suspended, which would be normal protocol at some schools for cursing at a teacher. Instead, he saw a drama therapist trained in trauma at Metropolitan the next day. The day after that, he met with the teacher, apologized and said he knew he had overreacted. He returned to the class immediately after that meeting.

“If you run a school that’s based on punishment and compliance, eventually you’re going to push kids out.” — Judith Puglisi, principal of Metropolitan Business Academy

“Some would say that punishment will extinguish bad behavior, but I would say the opposite,” said Puglisi, who recounted the incident under the condition that the student’s name be withheld for his protection.

Metropolitan is among a small but growing number of schools nationally that are turning the traditional approach to discipline on its head. Instead of trying to get students to leave their personal troubles at the door, these schools help kids cope with what often is a history of trauma. The idea is to catch problems before they become disciplinary issues resulting in suspensions or expulsions.

Metropolitan and a dozen other schools in Connecticut work with Animated Learning by Integrating and Validating Experience (ALIVE), a trauma response program that provides drama therapists to work with teachers to identify trauma, prevent problems from escalating and respond effectively when students do act out. The therapists — who hold master’s degrees with training in psychology and theater — offer one-on-one therapy and use drama and role playing in a mandatory class for freshmen."...

For full post, click on title above or here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/zero-tolerance-fails-schools-teaching-students-cope-trauma/

By Valerie Strauss
"There are plenty of resources available for educators and parents to help them engage young people in conversations about race, racism and police violence. I published such a list this week, which you can find here. But this post is about a mindset in too many schools where the adults don’t want to engage students in discussions about such sensitive issues — even though many educators believe it is as important as anything else kids learn in school.

This is a personal story by Trakela Small, an English teacher who has worked at private, public and charter schools for the past six years. She recently became an administrator at a charter school. She says her passion for social justice led into the field of education — and keeps her there.

This article, which was originally published on the Educator’s Room blog here and which I have permission to republish, speaks specifically to the deaths of a number of black men at the hands of white police officers. They include the deaths last week of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota; the 2015 death of Freddie Gray in the custody of police in Baltimore; Michael Brown, who was killed in 2014 in Ferguson, Mo.; Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old killed in 2014 in Cleveland; John Crawford in 2014 in Ohio; and Walter Scott, killed in 2015 in South Carolina."
***

By Trakela Small

"Look around your school. Who would be the person to talk to your students about race and how it affects minorities? Who would start the conversation about Alton Sterling or Philando Castile?

If you cannot think of anyone, there is an issue. If you don’t think children need to discuss racially charged incidents, there is an even bigger issue.

Minority children are now the majority of students in the United States. Hispanic and black children are historically among the most under-served children of the American education system. In the same vein, Hispanic and black people are disproportionately victims of police brutality. They are killed at rates that far exceed their makeup of the American population.

So why aren’t some schools talking to students about police brutality? And what does this mean for retaining teachers of color?

What happens to minority teachers when schools ignore race

I’ll illustrate my point with a personal story. Two years ago, I began teaching eighth-grade English in a school year that spanned the high-profile killings of Michael Brown, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice and John Crawford. In the fall of that school year, we were reading “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

After my initial shock from the tragedies wore off, I waited for the school leaders to reach out to staff. I expected them to help us sort through how to have hard conversations with students. I was the only black teacher in the middle school, which meant the kids with questions came to me first. A week or so later, leadership told us teachers to steer away from “politically charged” conversations. These conversations were not “age-appropriate” for middle-school students.

For a long time, my colleagues were silent. They continued their conversations of the merits of smoked paprika and Gouda cheese during lunch. I slowly withered. I lost my appetite for my food and their fellowship. Here and there, teachers awkwardly discussed the issues at lunch. But no one expressed the value in talking about anything with the children.

The violence of silence

By the time Freddie Gray died in police custody in Baltimore in April 2015, the continued silence of my school’s leaders sealed my decision to leave the school. The fact that leadership advised us to say nothing to children let me know teaching was the right thing (teaching), but I was in the wrong place. I had already signed a contract to return a couple of months earlier, so I decided to come back for a final year. I also knew I was one of three black teachers at the school. I was not ready to leave such a gaping void in the faculty. But I was carrying one in my heart.

In the winter of the following school year, I informed our leadership of my plans: I wanted to move on. I mentioned that I would like to discuss their plans to recruit more teachers of color. My question sat at the bottom of my intent form, which they had read before our meeting. My inquiry was a glaring accusation of their unwillingness to aggressively seek, to value black and Hispanic teachers. However, leadership chose silence again. They wished me the best of luck in my future endeavors and swiftly dismissed my concern. I effectively reduced the number of black teachers by a third. I found out the school hired a white woman to fill the position. This cycle would probably continue, and I was taking my voice away from my students.

Why schools avoid hard topics about race

The modus operandi to close the educational gap is an urgency for achievement so severe that it does not leave room to address students’ humanity. In schools where teachers call children scholars all day, it is easy to forget they are humans who have to live in a world outside the school walls. In a school where the staff does not look like the children it teaches, it is easy to avoid conversations about race. Many schools choose silence when police brutality reduces black people to hashtags. This is not without consequence to children.

Too many urban schools, populated by an overwhelming number of white teachers, simply do not have enough people in leadership who can speak from an authentic place about race. A person who has only ever lived in the eye of a tornado cannot easily talk about the damage one leaves. The silence that follows has lasting effects on minority staff members and the children that education reform is under-serving. This silence creates a physical discomfort, an emotional chasm that is empty and full at the same time. Teachers, with the best intentions, sell children on the lie that striving for college will change their lives. Teachers do a poor job telling black and brown children about the world that succeeds in stealing their lives and then excuse the theft as a natural disaster.

What we need to do

It’s never too late to change our mindsets about what children need to hear us say to them. We need a decolonization of schools and minds. When a school offers little more than WASP values and college preparedness, the school is not educating the whole child. A school cannot ignore reality for the sake of political correctness. Teachers need guidance on how to communicate world events to the students who deal with these issues when the final bell rings.

School leadership, no matter the ethnic makeup, must be fearless in how it navigates racial and social climates. Many schools are continuing to under-serve these students by choosing to ignore the societal issues that singularly affect minorities. We have to be brave enough to tackle the uncomfortable problems with the children who will one day grow up to change the world. Otherwise, we are no more than cowardly hypocrites."...

For full post, click on title above or here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/07/12/what-kids-need-to-hear-about-race-and-violence-but-many-schools-wont-touch/ 

Tuesday, June 14, 2016
1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m., ET

"Join the Urban School Improvement Alliance in the national and regional conversation on using data to inform school improvement, with a special focus on disciplinary data and Syracuse City Schools. Dan Losen, Director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, will present research on school discipline policies, ways that schools are currently collecting and analyzing disciplinary data, and the challenges and opportunities for districts in setting and practicing fair discipline policies. Participants will also learn in detail about how Syracuse rewrote its code of conduct using data and research, which is documented in a REL Northeast & Islands case study published in late 2015.

Who Should Attend?
District leaders and school-based practitioners, education researchers and technical assistance providers, state-level policymakers, and alliance members.

http://www.relnei.org/events/disciplinary-data-use-research-syracuse.html 

Featured Presenter

• Daniel Losen, JD, MEd, Director, Center for Civil Rights Remedies, University of California, Los Angeles

Discussants

• Andrew Seager, USIA Founding Facilitator, REL Northeast & Islands
• Lu Han, Data Analyst, Syracuse City, N.Y., School District

Moderators

• Anthony Petrosino, PhD, USIA Facilitator, REL Northeast & Islands
• Cailean Cooke, USIA Researcher, REL Northeast & Islands
• Jessica Bailey, PhD, USIA Researcher, REL Northeast & Islands

• Agenda

For more information and to register: 
http://www.relnei.org/events/disciplinary-data-use-research-syracuse.html