JUNE 2020: News You Can Use
Trauma Sensitive Social and Emotional Schools Collaborative Learning Academy (CLA):

Thanks to generous financial support from Kaiser Permanente, we are excited to announce last week's kick-off of our 3rd CLA cohort with an expansion from local K-12 teams to inclusion of an early learning and a higher education team...a cradle to credential CLA!

The overall goal is to increase capacity within school buildings to lead, implement, and sustain a trauma informed social emotional learning environment. Woven into the delivery of the CLA is intentional networking and trust-building between/among participating teams to strengthen the web of local education leaders and their shared learning of social emotional learning (SEL) and the interconnection with resiliency, protective factors, and trauma informed schools through an equity lens.
Who we are following:

Joe Truss- Culturally Responsive Leadership: Empowering Educators to Engineer for Equity
Raising a Generation of Children Who Are Thoughtful, Informed, and Brave About Race:

EmbraceRace is a multiracial community dedicated to sharing and developing best practices for raising and caring for kids, all kids, in the context of race. They are designed to help parents of all backgrounds talk to and guide their children about race early and often by lifting up age-appropriate activities that can be incorporated easily into your daily life. We hope these tips provide some much needed support for families committed to building tolerance, racial equity, and a social culture where all kids and families can thrive!
How the Pandemic Divides Us:

As crucial as the physiological immune system is, it is not our only defense against infectious agents. We also have a set of prepared psychological responses that are believed to promote disease avoidance. One of them is disgust, a universal human emotion identifiable in all cultures. Disgust is responsible for the revulsion that you experience when you taste sour milk or the nausea that you experience when you hear somebody clear phlegm from their throat. Its function is to encourage us to avoid potentially contaminated objects and people, thus preventing entrance of pathogens into our bodies.

However, the behavioral immune system is not always accurate. Just as a smoke detector may go off when there isn’t a fire, disgust can be triggered when there isn’t an infectious agent. Evolution doesn’t provide us with a window to the truth; it’s concerned with error management. It is in the business of minimizing the probability of costly errors (like ingesting infectious agents). The result is that we are prone to magical thinking when it comes to contamination. 
New The Brain Architects Podcast:

In this third special COVID-19 episode of The Brain Architects podcast, host Sally Pfitzer is joined by Dr. David Williams, the Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Williams discusses ways in which the coronavirus pandemic is particularly affecting people of color in the U.S., and what that can mean for early childhood development. He also pinpoints the importance of creating “communities of opportunity” that will allow all families to thrive—both during and after this pandemic.
Social and Emotional Learning Activities for Families and Educators:

Given our recent circumstances of our communities in crisis, now more than ever, we need to pay attention to our social and emotional states, as well as develop, teach and model skills. Enjoy this free resource from the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) with links, descriptions, grade level and audience.
Congratulations to our local graduates!

While this is an end to a high school or college journey like no other, we are thrilled to support our local young adults as they move onward to whatever awaits them on their path ahead. Kudos to the parents and educators making alternative plans to honor and celebrate our local graduates- we look forward to seeing social posts, pictures and stories in the coming weeks.

How about students still unsure what their plans are after high school? It's not too late to submit a FAFSA or a WASFA to access financial aid to attend a post-secondary school or an apprenticeship! We can help you with our financial aid assistance "drop in" hours located at www.graduatestrong.org.
Other Resources/Events:

  • Our partners at the Kitsap Regional Library wanted to share that the facilities are still closed until at least June 18th. Due dates have been extended until August 3, so please keep your Library materials for now. Find the latest on their response to the coronavirus outbreak. In the meantime, they are developing some fantastic virtual programming for youth and adults, check it out!


  • The Calm Classroom free e-book: The Calm Classroom mission is to empower children and adults alike with mindfulness-based techniques that support mental and emotional well-being