California’s First Surgeon General: Screen Every Student For Childhood Trauma
(NBC News)
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris has an ambitious dream: screen every student for childhood trauma before entering school. “A school nurse would also get a note from a physician that says: ‘Here is the care plan for this child’s toxic stress. And this is how it shows up,'” said Burke Harris, who was appointed California’s first surgeon general in January.
7 Reasons To Let Your Kids Fail, According To Psychology
(Business Insider)
Every child needs to know that they have an unlimited source of support in their parents, who will love and accept them no matter how badly they’ve failed. What they don’t need is to conflate that unconditional support with a shield protecting them from experiencing failure. In the end, that only does them a disservice. Here are seven reasons why.
Retooling Psych 101
(APA’s Monitor on Psychology)
An APA initiative provides guidance for those who teach what many say is psychology’s most important class
One Course, Two Courses, Three Courses, More? Providing Career Support Throughout The Undergraduate Curriculum
(APA’s Psychology Teacher Network)
Strategies for promoting career exploration.
Tips For Designing A Skills-Based, Learner-Centered Syllabus That Engages Students
(APA’s Psychology Teacher Network)
Your syllabus as a tool to identify and articulate skills.
Integrating Technology in the Classroom
(APA’s Psychology Teacher Network)
There are many technology-based tools that can be helpful for classroom teachers, and sorting through them to find ones that may be useful can be challenging. This web page describes pedagogical categories of technology tools for teachers; an infographic of useful technology tools (PDF, 275KB) grouped by the categories below is also available so that teachers can more easily identify which technology tools may be of use to them.
See The Winning Videos Of The APA PsycShorts Contest
(APA’s Psychology Teacher Network)
Twelve exceptional videos communicate the breadth and depth of psychological science.
What Is the Role of an All-Boys School in 2019? How the Elite Institutions Are Trying to Adapt
(TIME)
That’s why Michael Reichert, a psychologist who leads the Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives at the University of Pennsylvania, developed a program 25 years ago at the all-boys Haverford School outside Philadelphia to help boys learn to express their emotions. Now for an hour and a half every other week, about 50 boys gather to share pizza and their feelings. They dissect their emotions on topics ranging from sex and porn to their relationships with parents, girls and each other. Reichert says it’s not uncommon for boys to cry, and they often shake his hand and thank him when they leave.
Half of American Children Have Suffered Trauma. Here’s How South Shore Schools Are Dealing With It.
(Wicked Local Quincy)
“The reality with trauma is that the impact and the effects on emotional and physical well-being don’t have boundaries,” Barbara Green, a psychologist from the Center for Integrative Counseling and Wellness in Hingham, said. “If a child has had an adverse childhood experience – like seeing domestic violence at home – they don’t have a boundary between where that trauma has been experienced and the effects it has on them.”
Mindfulness for Middle Schoolers
(Mindful)
Two new studies from Yale, Harvard and MIT found that mindfulness may help improve mental health and academic performance in middle schoolers. In the first study of its kind, MIT researchers showed that mindfulness training may alter brain functioning linked to emotional processing in sixth-grade students. Published in Behavioral Neuroscience, the study included a subset of about 40 middle schoolers who participated in a trial comparing the effects of eight weeks of either daily mindfulness training or “coding” instruction.
California Tells Schools to Start Later, Giving Teenagers More Sleep
(New York Times)
A new law pushed back start times at most public middle and high schools, citing research that says attendance and performance will improve if teenagers get more sleep.
Do Tests Make You Stress? We’ve Got Tips to Help You Dial It Down and Do Your Best
(Washington Post – Subscription Required, Free Trial)
“Practice doing exactly what you’ll have to do on the test,” recommends Eileen Kennedy-Moore, a psychologist and author. For instance, explains Moore in her book “Kid Confidence,” for a math exam, practice doing actual math problems, like those that you’ll be tested on. Doing anything else, like reading through notes or watching your tutor solve problems, won’t prepare you, Moore says.
Lockdown Drills: An American Quirk, out of Control
(Washington Post – Subscription Required, Free Trial)
“All that causes is fear,” she said. Restaurants have 10 times as many homicides as schools. Why do we want to arm teachers and not wait staffs? “There’s a misunderstanding in where the dangers are,” said Dewey G. Cornell, a psychologist and professor at the University of Virginia. “Kids are at far greater danger going to and from school, than they are in the classroom,” he said. “School counseling, academic support, that’s gonna do far more to keep our communities safe.”
ADHD in Young Children: Why I Think Science Has It Wrong
(Parentology)
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports that “white, non-Hispanic children are more than twice as likely as black, non-Hispanic children to have entered kindergarten later than their birthdays allowed.” This indicates that practices such as redshirting are prevalent among families of affluence who can afford to provide daycare for an extra year. The research surrounding the effects of socioeconomic status (SES) and education are too numerous to cite or even list here. The American Psychological Association (APA) claims that “children from low-SES households and communities develop academic skills slower than children from higher SES groups.”
Children Aren’t Born With Learning Styles, Scientists Warn Parents
(Newsweek)
The idea that some kids pick up information better when it’s presented visually, and others physically or by listening, is a myth that could rob children of opportunities to learn and a waste of parents’ money, according to scientists. Researchers at the University of Michigan looked at the pervasiveness of myths about so-called learning styles. The authors of the study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology questioned what is known as psychological essentialism: The idea that the category something fits into is determined by a biological “truth” with a genetic basis. For instance, girls liking pink, pitbulls being violent, or visual learners only retaining information when it is presented to them in a specific way.
It Can Take Weeks for College Students to Get the Mental Health Help They Ask For. That’s a Seriously Dangerous Delay
(Cosmopolitan)
Last December, a student at Rowan University in New Jersey died by suicide in an off-campus parking garage. It’s impossible to know what, if anything, could have prevented this tragedy, but Rowan’s wait time for counseling services—reported to be months—was no secret. In the wake of his death, grad student Summer Dixon posted an online petition arguing that the school “NEEDS better mental…as “non-urgent” face possible wait times.)
RIT Wins $1.4M To Help Homeless With Opioid Addiction, Mental Illness
(Rochester Institute of Technology)
The grant award makes RIT’s clinical psychology internship one of the first programs in the area to include formal training in telepsychology for homeless individuals, according to Caroline Easton, professor in RIT’s School of Behavioral Health Sciences, and lead researcher on the grant. “We will be able to train interns to use innovations in technology and the use of telebehavioral health to target addiction and co-occurring mental health, such as trauma, that is common among the homeless,” Easton said. “This will provide a mechanism for easy access to care for the homeless.”
Episode 123: Four Research-Based Strategies All Teachers Should Use
(Cult of Pedagogy)
Cognitive scientist Pooja Agarwal and K-12 teacher Patrice Bain have collaborated on a new book, Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning. In the book, they go into detail about what it looks like when we actually apply four research-based “Power Tools” in the classroom: retrieval practice, spaced practice, interleaving, and feedback-driven metacognition—which is one we haven’t covered at all on this podcast. Today I’m going to talk with Pooja and Patrice about these strategies, the research behind why they work, and some ways you can start using them right away in your instruction.
Keeping Students Safe Is A Growth Industry Struggling To Fulfill Its Mission
(The Conversation)
In the 25 years I’ve spent working as a school psychologist and professor of school psychology, I’ve never seen so much federal, state and local money spent to “harden” school buildings and campuses.
The Biggest Hurdles Recent Graduates Face Entering the Workforce
(Harvard Business Review)
Despite being advised to hit the ground running, many young people we spoke with felt disoriented, confused, dissatisfied, and in many cases overwhelmed with the “real world.” In addition to impacting the young people themselves and their wellbeing, this intense and challenging experience affects companies, which spend time and money recruiting and training young people to join their ranks and immediately contribute to the organization.
Defunding Student Mental Health
(Inside Higher Ed)
The largest community college in Pennsylvania is eliminating mental health services on campus. Higher ed experts worry more struggling two-year institutions may follow suit.
