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The day is meant to provide the benefits of massage to people who don't normally receive massages

The " EveryBody Deserves a Massage " Week, held July 12-18, was designed to provide massages to people who may not normally have access to massage therapy. The event helps to introduce others to the benefits of massage, and to give back to the community by providing free massages.

The Association of Bodywork and Massage Professionals (ABMP) encourages massage schools, spas, massage therapy franchises, and other practitioners to find ways to participate in this event each year. Some suggestions for participation include holding a massage-a-thon for charity; volunteering after a road race to give massages to runners; giving free massages to police, firefighters, and veterans; or giving a portion of your business proceeds to charity during that week.

The Harris School of Business, which offers a massage therapy training program, was proud to be a participant in this national event this year. The Cherry Hill campus, located just 15 minutes outside of Philadelphia, was one of the participating locations. Students enrolled in the Massage Therapy program coordinated a free chair massage event. The event also had a special twist: in order to get your free massage, you had to donate a canned good. The canned goods were then donated to a local food bank.

The Cherry Hill chair massage event was well-recieved-after all, who wouldn't want a free massage? Chair massages are designed to work on the neck, shoulder, and upper back muscles, to deliver relaxation and stress-reduction to the clients. Delivering chair massages is a good way to reach out into the community to discuss the benefits of other types of massage, such as Swedish massage, deep-tissue massage, sports massage, and therapeutic massage.

Some of the benefits of massage include:

Reduce stress and anxiety

Relieve back, shoulder, and neck pain

Reduce muscle tension and pain

Relieve tension headaches

Improve flexibility

Boost your immunity

Improve overall health and well-being

For massage therapists who missed the event this year, don't worry! You can participate next year. Participating in EveryBody Deserves a Massage week not only allows you to give back to your community, but it also gets your name out in the community and creates good will. If you begin planning your event with enough advance notice, you can contact the ABMP for marketing materials to help spread the word. Sounds like a win-win opportunity!

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"EveryBody Deserves a Massage" Week Features Free Chair Massages

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The " EveryBody Deserves a Massage " Week, held July 12-18, was designed to provide massages to people who may not normally have access to massage therapy. The event helps to introduce others to the benefits of massage, and to give back to the community by providing free massages.

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BackPack Program Feeds Hungry School Kids

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Social Emotional Learning in High School

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Social Emotional Learning in High School

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The Washoe County school district in Nevada's second largest city has been way ahead of most other districts in its approach to social-emotional learning, especially in measuring students' SEL skills, which are part of its accountability system.

My colleague, Evie Blad, chronicled the district's efforts at building a thoughtful social-emotional learning program back in 2016.

As she noted, with the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the main federal K-12 law, states are now required to include at least one measure other than test scores in their accountability systems, an issue that has raised the profile of social-emotional measurement questions.

With the help of a federal grant and assistance from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, or CASEL, Washoe County leaders developed new survey measures, working with students to understand how they respond to questions about social-emotional skills and with teachers to develop data that could actually be used to change what happens in the classroom.

Alongside the district's existing early-warning system, which tracks risk factors for dropping out throughout a student's school career, the data being gathered around social-emotional learning is helping educators ensure that students' needs are met and their skills are developed as they progress through school.

We checked back in with the Washoe County district throughout this school year to learn how its work on social-emotional learning has been progressing.

In one of my visits, I spent time in high school classes that are pointedly about developing SEL skills such as coping with stress and the power of thought. Stephan Molder, an SEL teacher in Reno's Hug High School, says successful social-emotional learning starts with the adults in schools. He boils it down to this: "...It's all about building relationships with students. I never wreck the relationship, no matter what. I always try to save the relationship first."

Now, see for yourselves:

Related reading on social-emotional learning:
Follow @evieblad on Twitter or subscribe to Rules for Engagement to get blog posts delivered directly to your inbox.

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WATCH: A District That Prioritizes Social-Emotional Learning Grapples With How to Measure If It Works

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The Washoe County school district in Nevada's second largest city has been way ahead of most other districts in its approach to social-emotional learning, especially in measuring students' SEL skills, which are part of its accountability system. My colleague, Evie Blad, chronicled the district's efforts at building a thoughtful social-emotional learning program back in 2016.

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Instead of detention, these students get meditation | CNN

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An elementary school in West Baltimore uses meditation in place of detention, sending kids to a quiet space to stretch, do yoga and practice deep breathing.

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Smart Hearts: Social and Emotional Learning Overview

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School Provides student with Washing machine

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School Provides student with Washing machine

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Update: Since TODAY Parents first reported this story one year ago, Whirlpool's Care Counts program has grown to ten cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, and Atlanta. New research from the 2016-17 school year shows that high-risk students attended school nearly two more days a month while participating in the program and that almost all of the participating high-risk students raised their attendance rates to 91% during the program.

More than 1,000 school representatives - from all 50 states and as far away as Saudi Arabia, Ireland, and South Africa - have reached out to Whirlpool and requested to join the program since it launched last year.

Remember middle school? Remember how everything could be mortifying, especially if you didn't have the right brand of jeans or that certain kind of backpack or the expensive boat shoes everyone else (yes, everyone, Mom!) has?

Now imagine middle school if you not only couldn't afford those brands, but you couldn't even find a way to clean the clothes you do have. The prospect might just be mortifying enough to make you skip class altogether.

Now, two school districts have found that the secret to raising attendance rates in schools in low-income areas could be as simple as providing laundry machines.

"One of my students had just sort of withdrawn from school completely," Alison Guernsey, a seventh grade English teacher in Fairfield, California, told TODAY Parents. "After we started the program, he was more excited about coming, and he started to be actively engaged in class. He didn't feel like an outsider anymore," she said.

Whirlpool Brand Care Counts Program

At Guernsey's school - David Weir Preparatory Academy, a K-8 public school east of San Francisco - 94 percent of the student population is in the free and reduced lunch program, meaning students come from low-income homes.

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Last year, the school participated in an experiment introduced by Whirlpool as part of its Whirlpool Care Counts Program: Whirlpool installed a washer and dryer in the school and provided cloth laundry bags, garbage bags, detergent, and fabric softener. Then, the school administration discreetly invited a group of students who had missed more than ten days of school the year before to bring clothes with them to school to be cleaned while they were in class. Key words: in class.

"What I see is that if kids feel like they don't fit in - if they feel like they are missing something from the norm - then they don't want to participate in activities or sometimes even come to school," Guernsey said.

Back to school: See all of TODAY's back to school stories here

Whirlpool Brand Care Counts Program

"Many of our students are transient," said Guernsey. "Some are homeless, or they might stay with family members, but they don't have a stable home or money or resources." Guernsey said teachers have tried to help in the past by taking clothes home themselves to clean or by buying students clothes when they have none, they couldn't cover all the students' needs and sometimes couldn't get them to come to school for months at a time.

But after they started washing the students' clothes at school, they began to see a difference, said Guernsey.

Whirlpool Brand Care Counts Program

One girl, Guernsey said, "completely changed" after the school began washing her clothes. "Before, she would hardly speak in class. She was very quiet and didn't have many friends. She's blossomed now - she came into her own."

RELATED: New Rhode Island law requires recess in elementary schools

Guernsey's principal, Martha Lacy, saw these results as well. "Attendance is one of your main responsibilities as a principal," she told TODAY Parents. "Over the years, I knew there were many factors that kept kids from getting to school, including that some of them would just stay home if they didn't have clothes to wear."

"It's easy to be judgmental of parents whose children don't come to school if you don't have a frame of reference for their situations," said Lacy, noting that many students live in homes with domestic violence, incarcerated parents, or multiple families living together. "But you don't penalize the kids for their situations," she said.

In its first year, the Whirlpool program helped 17 schools in two school districts. They found that in that year, 93 percent of participating students increased their attendance after they were provided with clean clothes, with at-risk students attending almost two more weeks of school than the year before. Teachers in the schools surveyed said they saw dramatic increases in classroom and extracurricular participation as well as student motivation.

Each participating student received an average of 50 loads of laundry over the course of the year. Whirlpool is expanding the program to 20 more schools this fall.

RELATED See if your state has a tax holiday for back-to-school shopping

"We have a motto on our campus: no excuses," said Lacy. "That's for the adults, not the kids. There is no excuse for us not to do everything possible for the kids to be successful." Lacy said that for students at her school washing their clothes last year was a "turning point."

"This program has made a difference," she said, "and if we can make a positive difference with even one student, it's worth it."

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How one small change made a big difference to keep kids in school

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Update: Since TODAY Parents first reported this story one year ago, Whirlpool's Care Counts program has grown to ten cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, and Atlanta. New research from the 2016-17 school year shows that high-risk students attended school nearly two more days a month while participating in the program and that almost all of the participating high-risk students raised their attendance rates to 91% during the program.

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Even before the bell rings each morning, students at Centennial High School are lined up to get into the library. But they aren't necessarily looking for books.

They are waiting for a morning cup of joe at the Cougar Cafe, a coffee shop run by students.

Coffeehouses are springing up in high school libraries around the country, marking a big departure from the days when librarians sternly prohibited food, drinks and talking.

Some health advocates wonder whether high school students really need any more caffeine, or the calories in that caramel mochaccino.

But school officials say these coffee shops are promoting reading and studying by attracting teenagers who might not otherwise hang out in a library.

"Once they have them in there, they have their eyes and hopefully have their minds for a little bit," said Doug Johnson, a school library consultant from Minnesota.

The school library cafes are usually simplified versions of the coffee shops at Borders or Barnes & Noble bookstores. Centennial High's cafe, which has been open for only a few months, has an espresso machine and a milk frother, and sells fancy coffee drinks, hot and iced teas and hot chocolate.

"School food reflects the larger culture, so if there's a proliferation of coffee shops in bookstores out in the world, it's going to happen in schools," said Jan Poppendieck, a sociology professor at Hunter College in New York who is writing a book on school meals.

Profits turned into scholarships
Marketing students work as baristas in the Centennial cafe, which brings in about $200 a day. After expenses, the cafe should make about $10,000 during the school year, and that will be turned into scholarships for the 10 to 15 student employees.

The coffeehouse trend comes at a time when many school systems around country are removing junk food and soda machines.

"They're already providing horrible school lunches. Now they're adding to that with 800-calorie drinks," said Susan Levin, a registered dietitian with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Many students load up their coffee with sugar and cream or buy dessert-like coffee drinks, Levin said.

Terry Shrader, Centennial High principal, said the Parent Teacher Student Organization considered whether it was a healthy idea before opening the cafe.

"Then they came in one morning and watched how many students walk through the door with Starbucks or those Vaults, caffeinated drinks," he said. "There's not any increase in the amount of caffeine they're drinking."

The cafe uses 2 percent milk, offers sugar-free syrups and decaf coffee, and doesn't sell doughnuts or danish, said Robbie Reed, the Centennial marketing teacher who oversees the coffeehouse.

Huge increase in visits
John Witmer, who has run a before-school cafe at Hastings High School in Houston since he became librarian in 2003, said it is extremely popular with the 2,800 students.

Before the coffeehouse opened, "they were running about 6,000 visits per year to the library and checking out about 3,000 books," he said. Now, "we're running about 65,000 visits and checking out about 45,000 books."

He has used the money earned to eliminate library fines, he said.

On a recent school day at Centennial, 14-year-old Desmond Dwight, who works at the cafe, was sitting at one of the small round tables with friends. He said he visits the cafe "because I can get a cup of coffee and go sit and read a book."

Would he be reading in the library anyway if there were no coffee?

"I don't think so," he said, "because it would be boring just sitting here."

But 17-year-old Aaron Nall, a senior, said he doesn't think his fellow students read any more because of the cafe.

"I think this place is more a social scene than anything," he said. "And it makes it loud if you're trying to use the library."

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High school libraries luring students with coffee

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Coffeehouses are springing up in high school libraries around the country, marking a departure from the days when librarians prohibited food, drinks and talking. School officials say these shops are promoting reading by attracting teenagers who might not otherwise hang out in a library.

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The "Why" of Restorative Practices in Spokane Public Schools

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Students Allowed To Nap At School With Sleep Pods | NBC Nightly News

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At this time last year, Monica Pendleton felt like her 5-year-old son was in a constant temper tantrum.

She'd get calls from his school: He was screaming or kicking tables and chairs, or both. Teachers were at a loss. Pendleton would have to leave work to pick him up.

"The front office knows me and him personally," Pendleton said.

Last month, in a room in the basement of Pierce Elementary School, she told a therapist that her son, now 6, has completely turned around his behavior.

"Now, he loves school," Pendleton told the therapist. "He's doing so good in school, and now he's not as negative anymore."

Pendleton and her son are part of a new model of behavioral health care taking hold at several Milwaukee Public Schools and in some other schools throughout the state. The approach takes therapists out of their clinics and puts them inside schools. That makes the services more convenient and affordable.

The model grew in response to a problem: Students are increasingly coming to school with untreated mental health challenges that interfere with learning. School staff are not equipped or given enough time to handle severe needs. When staff members refer families to mental health professionals, too often nothing happens.

"Even though there's a lot of services in the city, they're not necessarily accessible," said Dena Radtke, who oversees social work services for Milwaukee Public Schools.

Some guardians can't find time for the appointments, or child care for siblings. Some lack transportation. Families might not have the money, or speak English, or feel comfortable walking into a clinic. When they get past those barriers, families might get stuck on a waitlist.

When therapists are located in schools, professionals say, families are far more likely to actually get care.

Only in select schools

The concept of school-based care has roots in a decade-old Minnesota pilot program, which expanded to provide therapists in more than 600 schools across the state in 2014. Students in those schools improved their test scores and had fewer suspensions after getting the program.

The model helped inspire Milwaukee's School Community Partnership for Mental Health, which has been expanding over the last seven years. There are now 22 MPS schools that host therapists from Children's Hospital, Aurora Family Services, Shorehaven and Sebastian Family Psychological Services.

"We need to bring the services to our families so they can access them," Radtke said.

Therapists in schools under the partnership can bill insurance for some costs. But for families without insurance - or with copays and premiums they can't afford - the district uses grant money to cover the costs.

Most of the students who see the therapists have never had mental health services before, said Ann Rolling, community services counseling manager for Children's Hospital. In other cases, the students may have seen a professional for a couple of sessions but stopped.

"I think we really are reaching families who would otherwise not have access to mental health care," Rolling said.

Rolling said she'd like to see every school have therapists on site, but funding falls short. Insurance payments alone are not enough - particularly those from Medicaid, which is used by the majority of Milwaukee students. There is a heavy reliance on limited grant funding.

After a request by state Superintendent Tony Evers, state lawmakers this year set aside $3.25 million for expanding school-based mental health services. Schools will be able to apply for grants from this new pot of money next summer.

Embedded at school

Therapists embedded in MPS schools don't only work with the kids. They work with school counselors, social workers, psychologists and teachers to develop plans to support students in the classroom and beyond.

At Pierce Elementary in the city's Riverwest neighborhood, Pendleton's psychotherapist, Jennifer Scott of Children's Hospital, works closely with school psychologist Kate Schmidt and social worker Jyl Ellmaker.

Typically, it's Ellmaker and Schmidt, who together have nearly 30 years of experience at the school, who refer a family to Scott. This often happens when their own efforts to help the student haven't been successful or the family is struggling to get outside therapy services.

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Brodi Ott, a teacher at Pierce Elementary School, reviews a book with students during class. Pierce is among a number of schools offering school-based mental health services for students. (Photo: Rick Wood/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

"For a lot of our parents, it can take a while to build that rapport, and once we do, they know that we have their children's best interests at heart," Schmidt said. "So, when we bring up Jenni, and the prospect of having therapy here at school, almost all of them are open to it."

All three believe the in-school model is more effective than referring students and families to providers off-site.

"I would make a lot of referrals in past years, (but) the follow-through in actually getting parents to those locations was very poor," Ellmaker said. "And if they did get there, the communications with the agency was very challenging."

Often, she said, it could take weeks of phone tag with multiple providers just to make sure consent forms were signed and to confer about progress and strategies. Once contact was made, it might only lead to one or two conversations.

"It would feel like we weren't always on the same page," she said.

That's different with Scott, who spends two days a week at the school.

Children's Hospital of Wisconsin psychotherapist Jennifer Scott (right) confers with Pierce Elementary School psychologist Kate Schmidt about the progress of students who are receiving services there. Scott spends two days a week at the school as part of a program to better deliver mental health care services to children. (Photo: Annysa Johnson / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Ellmaker and Schmidt have referred 13 cases to Scott so far this school year, a more manageable caseload after the 35 or so by the end of last year. Many of the children show signs of traumatic childhood experiences; about half score high for exposure to violence, whether directed at themselves or those around them.

"There's a lot of separation of parent due to incarceration, exposure to violence, whether that's witnessing domestic violence or violence in their neighborhoods," Scott said.

"While not every kid on my caseload would have a formal PTSD diagnosis, they're having ongoing trauma symptoms we're addressing, on top of whatever else we're working on."

That trauma can present itself in many ways: an inability to regulate emotions, unpredictable behavior, misinterpreting social cues, emotional responses that don't match the circumstances.

"That can look like physical aggression, verbal aggression, tantrums, withdrawal, crying easily, and being off task - walking around or out of the classroom a lot," Schmidt said.

The majority of referrals are boys, typically for disruptive behaviors. But the team is making a concerted effort to be on the watch for so-called internalizers.

"Those are the students who are more withdrawn," Ellmaker said. "They are not going to be loud or show major behavior problems. But they may be experiencing suicidal or self-harm thoughts, depression or anxiety."

Teamwork is key

The Pierce Elementary team meets weekly to discuss students' progress. On this December day, it was a mixed bag.

One student was doing surprisingly well. Another had been making improvements but had regressed in the last week. A third was in the throes of a near meltdown, brought on - they suspect - by the lingering effects of a violent incident the family experienced more than a year ago.

In the last week, the child had been especially emotional and disruptive at school, screaming and crying, knocking things over.

"That would definitely explain the decline," Schmidt said after Scott relayed a recent conversation she'd had with the child's mother.

RELATED: Wisconsin teens are changing the mental health conversation from illness to wellness to lessen stigma

RELATED: By understanding trauma, Wisconsin youth find path to healing

Student privacy is paramount. Teachers and administrators are looped in on a need-to-know basis only. (Children were not identified to the Journal Sentinel during observation. Children and families are only named in this story with consent.)

One strategy for this student who was experiencing outbursts, team members said, is to try to flip a switch in the child's brain, from the emotional to the intellectual, with a simple math equation. Scott also suggests getting the student to count to 10. As in, "Let's see if you can calm yourself by the time we count to 10."

The group decides that Schmidt will reach out to the teacher to make sure they're on the same page.

Teachers have been supportive of the program, for the most part. But it can be burdensome in some classrooms where they are trying to cover the required academic material, and are already struggling to manage behaviors.

"They're overworked and overloaded," Scott said. "And, now, there's this additional thing."

Scott met with one of the more enthusiastic teachers later that morning to discuss two students they've been working with.

One had been doing well but had been getting into fights in the last week and becoming more defiant. For the other, the teacher said, "it's a complete change."

'He's just more receptive to me'

Scott is quick to give the teacher credit, noting that she's adopted some new strategies for dealing with his behaviors. Among them, using "if-then" statements - as in, "if you do this, then this will happen" - following through on consequences of those choices and keeping her cool when things get out of hand.

"I've been trying to be a lot more calm because he does not do well if you get really upset," the teacher said.

Case in point, she said, was an incident that morning. The boy was out of his desk and misbehaving. She spelled out the consequences and he responded favorably.

"He got mad for a minute, and then he got back into his seat and turned it around without arguing with me," she said. "Usually, that ... situation would have turned his whole day into a terrible day. And he was fine."

The other child, she said, has relapsed, getting into fights, being disruptive in class. They've been working on helping him follow directions, take responsibility for his actions and introducing positive statements he can say to himself, like, "(She's) just trying to help me learn, so don't get mad at her."

Another idea they kick around is having the two students, who are friends already, work on motivating each other, and base their rewards on their mutual success.

"That could even be a cool conversation you could have with your whole class," Scott said. "Just talking about, 'What are three things we can do to help others make good choices?'"

Seeing success

The program also has shown some success, according to Schmidt, based on the surveys parents take before and after services.

"It's wonderful to see these parents, who are mostly younger parents, that are open to services and putting in the work to practice what Jenni teaches them at home," Schmidt said.

In the session with Scott, Pendleton played with her son as she practiced ways to build his self-confidence and encourage calm learning. Scott has been coaching Pendleton on providing "labeled praise" - specific compliments that make children feel understood, proud and cared for.

"You're doing a nice job being gentle with the toys," Pendleton said, watching her son build with Legos. "I like your car."

"Thank you," Pendleton's son replied.

"Nice labeled praise," Scott whispered.

As Pendleton and her son zipped their coats to leave, she and Scott agreed it might soon be time to discuss ending the therapy sessions because of how well her son was doing.

"With this program, I think it helped me more as a parent, and that helped him be more positive," Pendleton said. "I learn to focus more on the good than the bad."

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Kids in Crisis: Putting therapists in schools helps children with mental health needs

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At this time last year, Monica Pendleton felt like her 5-year-old son was in a constant temper tantrum. She'd get calls from his school: He was screaming or kicking tables and chairs, or both. Teachers were at a loss. Pendleton would have to leave work to pick him up.

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Local elementary school teaches mindfulness to improve mental health of students | Cronkite News

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The RULER Approach to social and emotional learning: Isolated