Consider This...
Things to Consider in October 2019 from RTSC
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News and information about education, research, and support for SESPs; adoptive, foster, and kinship caregivers; and child welfare and education professionals helping children with trauma and other special needs get the most from their education.
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RTSC's
8th Annual Making a Difference Conference
will be held on Tuesday, November 19th, 2019 at the Best Western Royal Plaza Hotel in Marlboro. Don't miss this opportunity to experience a full day engaging and informative presenters, guest speakers and networking. Our keynote speaker
is
Steve Pemberton
.
This program has been approved for 5 Social Work Continuing Education hours for relicensure, in accordance with 258 CMR. NASW-MA Chapter CE Approving Program, Authorization Number D81096. For more information or to register, visit our
Conference Website
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Interesting question that three separate lawsuits are seeking to answer. A group of students in California, New York, and Arizona are at the center of three ongoing test lawsuits that argue schools have a responsibility to consider and mitigate the effects of trauma on learning. The outcomes of these lawsuits could have ramifications for schools nationwide as evidence grows on the negative effects that traumatic events can have on children's learning and well-being. As Susan Cole, Director of the Trauma Learning and Policy Initiative at Harvard Ed Law Project says, "The trauma isn't about an event that happened; it's about what the impact is," and "if the child isn't buffered and helped to overcome these stresses, they can grow into disabilities."
The lawsuit alleges the students' IEP teams refused to discuss the girls' increased academic and emotional difficulties in the context of those experiences and, for some likened their symptoms to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorders. These lawsuits hope to address the schools failure to buffer the students from re-occurring trauma within the school systems, leading to the student's lack of academic success.
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How often do you find it a challenge to schedule time to attend a child's IEP meeting with both family and work commitments? Many times it can be difficult to take time off of work to attend the meeting at the school's schedule. Well, now the Labor Department has issued an opinion that states that parents can use Family Medical Leave time to attend and not risk losing their jobs.
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Racial trauma, a form of race-based stress, refers to People of Color and Indigenous individuals’ (POCI) reactions to dangerous events and real or perceived experiences of racial discrimination. Such experiences may include threats of harm and injury, humiliating and shaming events, and witnessing racial discrimination toward other POCI. Although similar to posttraumatic stress disorder, racial trauma is unique in that it involves ongoing individual and collective injuries due to exposure and re-exposure to race-based stress. The articles in this special issue introduce new conceptual approaches, research, and healing models to challenge racial trauma. The authors encourage psychologists to develop culturally informed healing modalities and methodologically sophisticated research and urge the inclusion of public policy interventions in the area of racial trauma.
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In the world of trauma and toxic stress, the stress hormones released by the adrenal glands, two cone-shaped organs that sit atop the kidneys, such as cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine, have been the initiators of the fight or flight response. Well now there is a new player at the table…osteocalcin. Osteocalcin is a protein produced and secreted by bone, and is understood to be implemental in causing the stress response in recent studies.
Gerard Karsenty
, a physician and geneticist at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, started his work on osteocalcin more than 20 years ago.
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When looking at the development of all children, but especially children early in age, we look to their primary resources…relationships with caregivers. Young children experience their world as an environment of relationships, and these relationships affect virtually all aspects of their development – intellectual, social, emotional, physical, behavioral, and moral. The quality and stability of a child’s human relationships in the early years lay the foundation for a wide range of later developmental outcomes that really matter – self-confidence and sound mental health, motivation to learn, achievement in school and later in life, the ability to control aggressive impulses and resolve conflicts in nonviolent ways, knowing the difference between right and wrong, having the capacity to develop and sustain casual friendships and intimate relationships, and ultimately to become a successful parent oneself.
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What's a AAA student? AAA stands for "Amygdala Always in Action", or in other words a trauma kid. Read a parents view on how shifting the way that we view these kids allows us to love them for who they are.
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"Instead of imposing adult expectations, parents and teachers should try to “take their blinders off” and see the world through the eyes of young children—a change in perspective that might allow us to better understand and cultivate their unique abilities, says Erika Christakis, former faculty member of the Yale Child Study Center. Although young children are in some ways safer than in the past, as far as child welfare laws, they are also stressed more as the number of expulsions for boys and children of color are concerned. “Being little” is of critical importance because we see the signature of early childhood experience literally in people’s bodies: their life expectancies are longer and their social-emotional capabilities are more robust when they have a chance to learn through play and through deep relationships, and when their developing brains are given the chance to grow in a nurturing, language-rich, and relatively unhurried environment. It’s clearer than ever before that young children are not simply mini-adults.
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Useful Tools and Resources
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Looking to help keep yourself calm during those long and sometimes stressful IEP meetings? Need to re-focus yourself to the task at hand but can't take the time to attend a yoga class mid-day? Try some of these simple yet effective tools to calm yourself down.
Social and Emotional Learning is all the buzz lately and what many strive for, but are you as a teacher using these integration tools regularly and effectively in the classroom. Transforming Education has compiled a self-check tool looking at each approach for reflection and guidance.
The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard looks at how play in childhood helps to foster children’s
resilience
to hardship, and how the complex interactions involved when children play help build their brains, through supportive relationships.
The Family TIES Parent to Parent (P2P) program is recruiting parents who enjoy talking with other parents via phone conversations, interested in sharing their experiences raising a child with a disability and willing to complete the
Listening & Learning training
.
More...
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Upcoming Federation Events
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Tuesday, November 12, 2019, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM EDT
Presenter:
Ailish Donovan the Senior Program Manager for Ascentria Care Alliance’s (formerly Lutheran Social Services) Unaccompanied Refugee Minor Program and Division of Children’s Services Program.
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Friday, November 8, 2019 8:30 AM – 4:00 PM EDT
Our Lady of Mount Carmel & Our Lady of Loreto Parish, 37 Massasoit Rd Worcester, MA 01604
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Friday, December 6, 2019 8:30 AM – 4:00 PM EDT
Merrimac Public Library, 86 West Main Street, Merrimac, MA 01860
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The Federation for Children with Special Needs is proud to be sponsoring and participating in the Eight Annual SMILE Mass Gobble, Wobble 5K, 10k, and Kids Fun Run which will take place on Saturday, November 23, 2019 at 10 am. All events start and ends at the Curtis Middle School, 22 Pratts Mill Road in Sudbury, MA. Pam Nourse, our new Executive Director is running for us! We need your support:
Runners
Donate
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Are you that special someone? Volunteer to be a Special Education Surrogate Parent.
10/22/19 Online
10/24/19 Gardner
11/06/19 North Andover
11/12/19 Barre
11/20/19 Wrentham
11/23/19 Online
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Quick Access to RTSC Resources...
For more information on becoming a Special Education Surrogate Parent
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Federation for Children with Special Needs
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