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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Trauma can be defined as a deeply distressing response to a real or perceived threat to one's life. Trauma can result from events including, but not limited to, getting physically or sexually assaulted, sudden death of family members or close friends, being emotionally abused or neglected throughout one's childhood, the result of a catastrophic environmental event like an earthquake or hurricane, and can even result from generations of oppression on a family or community. Trauma is traditionally popularized as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a severe adaptation to threat characterized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) as having re-experiencing symptoms (e.g., flashbacks, nightmares, daydreams of the traumatic event), avoidance symptoms (e.g., avoiding the physical place where the event occurred, avoiding/suppressing thoughts related to the event, etc.), and arousal symptoms (e.g., hyper or hypo-vigilance; i.e., rapid increase/decrease of the individual's physical "alarm" system such as heart rate and other autonomic nervous system functions). This definition however, can be limited and does not take into account the many nuances of subjective experience and behavioral expression. For example, a young child who's mother neglected him and in turn developed an insecure ambivalent attachment style may develop a worldview that's very cold and harsh relationally; a young woman living in a community plagued by violence and drugs, but who's never been assaulted physically herself can still develop hyperarousal in response to constantly hearing gunshots. These are just a couple scenarios in which trauma can occur and fall outside the exact criteria of PTSD.
Check out the new Trauma-Informed Care for Professionals Working with Youth Online Course
Most educators, therapists, and other youth workers know inherently that every young person doesn't fit in a predefined diagnostic box. We know our students and clients have varied experiences that have impacted their lives in many ways, which can manifest in our classrooms and therapy offices diversely. What's often missing is a basic understanding of how trauma impacts the brain and how such function, in turn, affects behavior. Knowledge of the traumatized brain can drastically improve how we engage our young people in order to practice a trauma-informed approach.

An Introduction to Trauma and the Brain

First, a quick primer on the brain. There is the hindbrain or reptilian brain, which includes the brainstem and cerebellum. This controls all the essential functions we don't need to think about such as breathing, using the bathroom when we're infants, etc. Next is the mid-brain. This includes the limbic system and often gets pegged as the "emotional" brain. Finally is the forebrain, which includes the neocortex and is responsible for our higher order functions like language, abstract reasoning and of course executive function. The major structures of the brain involved in processing trauma are the thalamus, the amygdala, the hypothalamus, and the hippocampus.
Thalamus
The thalamus sits atop of the brain stem and is responsible for processing external stimuli. Sounds, images, any of the senses are first sent through the Thalamus, or as I like to call it the "gatekeeper." The thalamus is like a gatekeeper or bouncer at a club. They are the first to receive all the action; everything that wants to "get in."
Amygdala
The amygdalae are two almond shaped parts of the brain in the limbic system that picks up where the thalamus left of. Whereas the thalamus processes initial sensory information, the amygdala interprets it. Bessel Van der Kolk calls the amygdala the "smoke detector" because it can be akin to a smoke detector sensing smoke or fire. This "alarm" system alerts us (swiftly and unconsciously) of whether an external stimulus is a threat.
Hippocampus
The hippocampus is also part of the limbic system and is associated with memory. When the amygdala is triggered into an alarm state (i.e., a threat is perceived and the smoke detector goes off) it also relies on past memory/experience (e.g., a past threatening experience that is again happening currently).
Hypothalamus
When the amygdala and hippocampus work in tandem to declare threat, the hypothalamus quickly sends a message down the brain stem. This activates autonomic nervous system functions like increased or decreased heart palpitations, sweating, etc. and sends the body into fight, flight, or freeze states.
Prefrontal Cortex
The prefrontal cortex is mentioned here only because in normal processing, if the amygdala perceives no threat it quickly establishes connection via the anterior cingulate with the prefrontal cortex. This enables language, abstract thought, executive function, etc. However, when the smoke alarm is triggered and a message is sent via the hypothalamus to the hindbrain, all connection with the prefrontal cortex ceases. That means all normal executive functions and normal modes of thinking/perspective-taking are offline. Overtime, this of course leads to a number of issues for individuals including decreased self-regulatory abilities and a constant state hyper or hypo-vigilance (depending on the individuals adaptation of the trauma) with a decreased ability to manage such states. A common example referenced in the literature is a person encountering a snake in the woods and being startled (sensory information taken in by the thalamus), and threatened (via the amygdala). In the future, they may be walking around the corner of their home and become just as startled, and perceive just as much threat by seeing a coiled up hose and mistake it for a snake (that's the hippocampus working in tandem with the amygdala).

With the youth we work with, this shows up in many ways. One of the most common situations I hear of involve youth who mistakenly perceive another person's facial expression as a threat when it may not be. I once had a young man tell me:

"Sometimes when I see a person across the street, it makes me clutch my gun because you never know what they're about to do. But now when I think about it's like, 'what if that's someone that knows me and my family and just recognizes me from family pictures.' I'm about to shoot someone for no reason and who wasn't even trying to rob me or hurt me."

This type of trauma adaptation also happens in interactions between students and teachers, with teachers unintentionally triggering students' trauma. Sometimes a youth will be not that engaged in class, or sometimes will be very disruptive (the manifestation of the trauma behaviorally). In turn, teacher will try to manage the classroom by telling the youth to be quiet. It oftentimes comes across negatively with a harsh tone and in front of the rest of the class. They give multiple directives and wonder why the youth isn't complying. One time a youth told me a teacher simply "talking at" him in class set him off. He couldn't even listen to the actual words coming out of the teacher's mouth. All he was aware of was the anger consuming him. His amygdala (in tandem with the hippocampus) was setting of his alarm system given that he'd been emotionally and physically abused as a child. His trauma manifests behaviorally by an aggressive outburst, cusses out the teacher, and storms out of the classroom. The youth then gets labeled as a "trouble-maker" when in fact his trauma was triggered by an unskillful approach to classroom management.

Trauma manifests in many ways in the classroom, therapy room, and other youth work settings. What's most important is that professionals have an understanding of how trauma affects the brain and how sometimes youths' behaviors really are a result of triggered trauma and not simply a "decision" to defy you as the adult. With deeper understanding and integration with present-moment practice, teachers, therapists, and other youth workers can be compassionate and use their understanding as a mechanism to build relationships, safety, and trust with the traumatized youth. The key is for us adults to not function from a place of ego, needing to be right, or authoritative assertion, but rather a compassionate, understanding, and relationship-based perspective. Such a relating style illustrates a trauma-informed approach.

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Trauma and the Brain: An Introduction for professionals working with teens - Center for Adolescent Studies

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Trauma can be defined as a deeply distressing response to a real or perceived threat to one's life. Trauma can result from events including, but not limited to, getting physically or sexually assaulted, sudden death of family members or close friends, being emotionally abused or neglected throughout one's childhood, the result of a catastrophic environmental event like an earthquake or ...

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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The widening education gap between the rich and the poor is not news to those who work in education, many of whom have been struggling to close the gap beginning the day poor children enter kindergarten or preschool. But one unlikely soldier has joined the fight: a pediatric surgeon who wants to get started way before kindergarten. She wants to start closing the gap the day babies are born.

When Dr. Dana Suskind began doing cochlear implants on infants at the University of Chicago-a cutting-edge surgical technique that allows once-deaf babies to hear-in her follow-ups with families she noticed a stark difference in how the now-hearing children acquired language. Once they could hear, some children's language skills thrived and grew, while others languished. Why this was so began to nag at her. What was causing some children to leap ahead in their language skills?

The difference turned out to be the words children heard from their parents and caregivers, millions of them. Baby talk, explaining and describing, asking questions even when they weren't going to get an answer - adults "using their words" is the thing that some parents and caregivers do thousands of time a day that builds a baby's brain.

Suskind found that, once parents understood the science of language-building, many were eager to try it out.

While auditing a graduate-level course on child language development at the University of Chicago, Suskind heard about the groundbreaking Hart and Risley study on the differences in how parents from different income levels interacted with their children. After painstakingly following around families and recording how often they talked to their children, Hart and Risley found that the children of professional parents heard approximately 11 million words in a year, while children from poor welfare families heard only 3 million. Extrapolated over time, Hart and Risley surmised that, by the time poor children turned 4, they had heard 30 million fewer words than their richer counterparts.

There was a direct correlation between the children who'd heard a lot of parent talk and how prepared they were to learn once they arrived at school. Hart and Risley wrote, "With few exceptions, the more parents talked to their children, the faster the children's vocabularies [grew] and the higher the children's IQ test scores at age 3 and later."

For Suskind, a lightbulb went on.

"The truth is, much of what you see in children born into poverty is analogous to children born deaf," Suskind said. "It's a really important point. The most fundamental science shows that it's really language, and all that comes with it, the brain-building aspect of things, that makes a difference."
Bringing Parents On Board
In Suskind's new book, "Thirty Million Words," she explains the research behind the word gap in detail, along with her research-based initiative of the same name, aimed at boosting children's brains in the first three years of their lives. Working together with researchers at the University of Chicago, Suskind and her team have created an action-based curriculum already used in home visits with 200 families of infants and young children, all of whom will be followed all the way to kindergarten. Their upcoming maternity ward curriculum will launch soon with 350 families, and they hope to expand the program to pediatric well-child visits.

Suskind's vision was not just to give parents a directive - you need to talk more to your child. She wanted them to understand why. Understanding that you are the architect of your child's early brain development, said Suskind, is "extremely powerful."

Many parents believe that because they didn't do well in school themselves, they have no business "teaching" their babies anything. But showing them how simply talking, even baby talking (which Suskind calls "child-directed speech," and said gets an undeserved bad rap), to their children can make a difference, changes their minds.

"This is the most empowering, affirming science that you can share with parents," Suskind said. "It's one thing to say, 'You're the baby's most important teacher,' because they don't really believe it. You have to show them."

Of course, some words are more powerful than others. In a 2014 report on the "PBS NewsHour" regarding the word gap, a similar effort to increase parent awareness in Providence, Rhode Island, used a Language Environment Analysis (LENA) word pedometer to count the number of words that low-income children heard in a day. Then a social worker would tally the word counts to show parents how much they were, or weren't, interacting with their child. The report found that the LENA counted the words, but couldn't assess the message. In other words, as correspondent John Tulenko pointed out, "Damn, why do you always make such a mess?" counted the same number of words as "Honey, you are cute, let's clean you up."

Hart and Risley's research found the message counted as much as the number of words, and the number of encouraging words also differed across socioeconomic lines. They found children in low-income families "heard more than double the negative remarks per hour" compared with the children of professionals, who were much more likely to hear "Good job!" or "You're right!"

"Even without science, we know intuitively that saying 'shut up' 30 million times is not going to help a child develop into an intelligent, productive, stable adult," Suskind writes. She said that teaching parents the right kind of positive talk is built into the curriculum, and will be monitored for their ongoing longitudinal study of Thirty Million Words outcomes.

"The [Thirty Million Words] home visiting curriculum has an entire module devoted to encouragements - specifically person-based and process-based praise - which has been very well received by parents," she said. "We explain the difference between praising the child versus praising the child for what he or she is doing, and how the latter actually builds resilience and determination in young children."

Suskind found that, once parents understood the science of language-building, many were eager to try it out. To show parents how baby brain-building is easier than they might think, the Thirty Million Words team broke down language-building into three steps:

* Tune In. "Tuning in" asks parents to follow the child's lead, to stop what they are doing and join their child, engaging and connecting with them. Often this step means parents need to get down on the floor and help build the Lego castle, or color a page in the coloring book.

* Talk More. Just like it sounds: Use more words and a rich vocabulary. Narrate the changing of a diaper or doing laundry, use descriptive words. Talk about the past or the future.

* Take Turns. Suskind said many parents say, "But my baby doesn't have any words! How can we have a conversation?" Viewing young children as a conversational partner means parents can respond to anything - a gesture, gurgle or burp - to begin showing young children how to have a conversation.

Here, Suskind slyly slips in a "fourth T": Turn off the technology to engage with your child. "We're all at risk now, the technology is so seductive," said Suskind, admitting that families of all income levels should find time to peel themselves away from technology to tune in and talk. While it's not realistic to imagine never again getting immersed in a smartphone, understanding why technology doesn't grow babies' brains is valuable.

Human brains are hardwired for social interaction, and the brain-building benefits of Tuning In, Talking More, and Taking Turns happen when it's coming from a real human being, not a TV or tablet. Yet there are certain technologies that can actually increase social interaction: "A recent study shows that if you had a Skype with your grandmother," Suskind said, "somebody on the other side of the screen responding [to your child], that counts! A human being on the other side of the technology works."

Suskind's passion for talk is infectious, and she hopes to turn not only parents who have benefited from the Three Million Words program into evangelists, but teachers and day-care providers, too. She encourages educators to tell parents about the science of talking to children, and to explain that any opportunity, even the most mundane, is an opportunity to practice the Three Ts. Especially reading a book together.

"It's really about having a conversation over the book," she said. "You don't have to read every word if the child doesn't want to. It's really about having a conversation, tuning in to what your baby is interested in, talking about the pictures."

Near the end of "Thirty Million Words," Suskind writes about James, a young dad who used the Three Ts with his son, Marcus, and then began telling everyone in his life about how he learned to talk to children. He even enlisted the help of his son's day-care teacher.

"She knew a bit about it, but not about Tuning In or the fact that watching TV doesn't teach words in a way that stick," James told Suskind. "When I learned new things, I always brought them to her and she would start using them at the day care."

Suskind said this kind of spreading the word is crucial to getting the information out. "Sure, I want teachers to read it [the book]," Suskind said. "But I want them to feel empowered, I want them to become evangelists. Because, unless the whole population understands how important parents and teachers are, we're never going to get the investment."

What Parents Can Gain From Learning the Science of Talking to Kids

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What Parents Can Gain From Learning the Science of Talking to Kids

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The widening education gap between the rich and the poor is not news to those who work in education, many of whom have been struggling to close the gap beginning the day poor children enter kindergarten or preschool. But one unlikely soldier has joined the fight: a pediatric surgeon who wants to get started way before kindergarten.

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In the warren of Brockton Public Schools counseling offices, a police scanner flares. Somewhere in the city, a student's mother, father, aunt or uncle, faces a brick wall, wrists handcuffed behind their back. They're likely not coming home tonight.

But the counselors in these offices, heads tilted to the noise of the street, as well as Brockton's teachers, paraprofessionals, and other educators, are committed to making sure students who suffer traumatic experiences, like a parent's jail time, do not have their own development arrested. For a decade, educators in Brockton, 30 miles south of Boston, have worked to create trauma-informed learning spaces. More recently, NEA and its affiliates, such as the Illinois Education Association (IEA), have carried the issue to the forefront of public education.

The numbers are stark: One in four U.S. students will witness or experience a traumatic event before the age of 4, and more than two-thirds by age 16.

These children do not-they cannot-simply close their eyes to what they've seen or experienced. With each forced eviction, each arrest of an adult in their home, each abuse to their own bodies, an instinctive trigger to "fight or flee" is pulled over and again.

Many educators know intuitively that no matter how hard they work, or all the different things that they try, there are still some children that they struggle to reach. Now, we know the science of why" - Audrey Soglin, Illinois Education Association

Over time, a child's developing brain is changed by these repeated traumatic experiences. Areas that govern the retention of memory, the regulation of emotion, and the development of language skills are affected. The result is a brain that has structurally adapted for survival under the most stressful circumstances-but not for success in school.

"It was like an epiphany," says Brockton teacher Michele Holmes, a veteran of 24 years, when she learned from the Massachusetts-based Trauma and Learning Policy Institute (TLPI) how the traumatic experiences of students affected their brains. "All of a sudden, everything made sense."

In fact, kindergartners who have suffered traumatic experiences score below average in reading and math, even when influential factors like household income and parental education are factored in, according to a 2015 study published in the journal Pediatrics. They also are three times more likely to have problems with paying attention, and two times more likely to show aggression to their classmates and teachers.

Eventually, they become the students who get suspended too often, feeding the school-to-prison pipeline.

Says Audrey Soglin, executive director of the Illinois Education Association, whose trauma-informed trainings have reached thousands of Illinois educators: "Many educators know intuitively that no matter how hard they work, or all the different things that they try, there are still some children that they struggle to reach. Now, we know the science of why."

And now, with resources such as NEA's "Teaching Children from Poverty and Trauma" handbook, NEA members also can know the "how" and "what" of trauma-informed education. And what works for students with trauma also works for non-traumatized students, too.

With a mixture of empathy, flexibility, and brain-based strategies, trauma-informed educators are creating cool, calm classrooms that work for all of their students-a kind of "universal design," says Brockton's head of counseling, John Snelgrove.

The Calming Corner

As a school-based counselor, Snelgrove worked years ago with a student who was quick to rage. "What's going on?" Snelgrove asked. The answer: the student, his mom and his infant brother had lost their home and were sleeping in a laundromat during its closed hours-11 p.m. to 6 a.m.-then showering before school at a friend's apartment.

Another parent told an administrator here, when asked why her child was sprinting home during school hours, that, "he's been very needy since I was shot."

These experiences directly shape your students' brains. Consequently, the disruptive behavior that teachers often see-and punish-isn't willful disobedience or defiance.

It's a subconscious effort to self-protect. Their altered brains are screaming: Fight! Flee! Freeze! "It can look like these children are shutting down [or zoning out], but their brain is telling them, 'you need to be safe,'" says Illinois special educator Kathi Ritchie, the facilitator of the NEA EdCommunities group on trauma-informed classrooms/strategies.

For example, "the behavior of wearing a hoodie pulled tight over their heads, curled up, head down on a desk...is similar to what they have had to do at home. They try to become invisible so that they are not seen by a drunken caregiver or abuser who comes home looking for a punching bag," writes the author of the NEA handbook on teaching children from poverty and trauma.

So what is a trauma-sensitive educator to do? Instead of rushing to "punish, punish, and punish," says Snelgrove, adults should respond in ways that make children feel safe. "Punishment alone, free from treatment and education, doesn't change behavior," says Snelgrove.

"Think before reacting," says Holmes. "When the situation is charged, you have to step back and think 'How can I bring this down and get back to learning?'"

In a corner of Alexandra Kay's kindergarten classroom at the Barrett Russell School in Brockton, there's a small tent where agitated students can curl up on a dimly lit pillow for a few minutes of quiet, and also a sand table, where they can run their fingers through the cool grains. "A sensory break," Kay calls it. For her kindergartners who need a more active break from their desks, Kay also has a small trampoline.

Keeping in mind that the brains of some traumatized students are ill-adapted for language development or memory retention, Kay's room contains lots of visual cues. The day's events are scheduled in advance, routinized, and posted in successive, simply illustrated pictures: first breakfast, then seat work, followed by circle time. Behavioral expectations are illustrated, too: quiet mouths, quiet hands, quiet feet.

Ritchie also recommends teaching strategies that include asking students to repeat verbal instructions, and using more written instructions or visual prompts for multi-step directions, like a sticky Post-it note on a desk. Thoughtful breathing or mindfulness exercises can be helpful, according to the NEA handbook.

At Brockton's George School, every classroom has a "thinking island," where raging or "deregulated" students can retreat, and each island is equipped with a sensory basket that might contain a piece of fleece or satin ribbons, a scented votive candle (wick removed!) and a plastic bottle with colored water and glitter inside. Tip over the bottle, watch the glitter slowly descend, and calm down.

Not long ago, one of Holmes' 7-year-olds asked her for the Play-Doh. "I said, 'you know it's not a toy...' and she said, 'I know! It's a tool to caaaaalm dooooown."

"If the kid needs the putty, let them play with the putty. If they need gum, give them gum! Be flexible!" urges Snelgrove. "We need to provide the materials, or create the conditions, that enable children to be successful."

"Flexibility" is a word or phrase you'll hear often when talking with trauma-informed educators. "Mindset" is another one. "Our kids" is a third.

Three Things You Should Do Now
Learn more with these union-developed resources

1. Download NEA's "Teaching Children from Poverty and Trauma" handbook for information about the symptoms of trauma in students and classroom strategies to build community, teach social skills, and also enhance reading and other academic skills. (One sample tip: Greet every student authentically. Another: Write new vocabulary words in icing on cake!)

2. Join the NEA edCommunities group on trauma-informed classrooms and strategies, so that you can join the discussion with your colleagues and also share in resources, like webinars and presentations.

3. Visit Partnership For Resilience. The partnership, which has IEA at its head, has compiled a wealth of online resources, including explanatory videos and conference presentations.

The Ultimate Goal

The work of a trauma-informed educator isn't about using a special "trauma curriculum," it's about giving students the support they need to access your regular curriculum, says Snelgrove.

"It can't just be, 'open your book, read the questions, and begin.' I have 7-year-olds who think their parents will be deported," says Holmes. They can't learn until their fears are calmed and their attentions [are] re-focused. And they also can't learn if they're suspended or sitting in principals' offices.

"The ultimate goal is to keep them in the classroom," says counselor Kristin McKenna, of Brockton's Arnone School, where the suspension rate fell by more than 40 percent after school-wide TLPI training.

This work also isn't what people might imagine as typical "union work." So why have NEA leaders and affiliates like IEA jumped headfirst into it?

In Illinois, it started with a conversation between IEA's executive director and her pediatrician brother. It continued with IEA-sponsored film screenings of Paper Tigers, a school-based documentary from Walla Walla, Wash., that shows the impact of "one caring adult" in the lives of traumatized teens. Up to 300, 400, or even 500 IEA educators, parents, and community members were mesmerized at each showing, says IEA President Cinda Klickna.

"It was just so powerful-we had one [woman] who went to the screening and said, after 20 years of teaching, that it changed her entire thinking about what she does," says Klickna.

Fueled by that kind of response, IEA's work has rapidly expanded, in part through support from the NEA Foundation, to include three pilot programs in the districts south of Chicago. In those places, IEA's partnership provides members with the professional development they need to be ready to teach, and the services students need to be ready to learn-like restorative dental care and treatment for asthma.

"I say, and I keep saying, advocacy for our members includes professional development. And when you find a topic that really resonates, and this resonates, it's very exciting. It's what they need to be able to do their jobs better.

"To us, it's about leading the profession," says Klickna.

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How Schools Are Helping Traumatized Students Learn Again

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In the warren of Brockton Public Schools counseling offices, a police scanner flares. Somewhere in the city, a student's mother, father, aunt or uncle, faces a brick wall, wrists handcuffed behind their back. They're likely not coming home tonight.

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We invite IB Diploma Programme (DP) graduates to reflect on their lives and studies. Kristen Leer received her diploma from Ronald Reagan High School, US. Learn more about the IB Alumni Network at ibo.org/alumni. By Kristen Leer
There is something different between our 21st century existence and that of the past. The way that people interact and how they connect with each other has changed. And these changes are influencing people and their actions in drastic ways. The type of communication presented through these new interactions seems to be eroding trust and breaking the connections between people and their society.

This raises concern for the younger generation, how are they to adapt to these changes and cope with exposure to conflict in the comfort of their own home and community? This question can build onto others - the question of the impact on not only their lives but their education, their family, and future relationships. There is something, a common tool that every person can hone and master. It seems to be easily forgotten when confronted with these aforementioned challenges, but it could be the one thing that proves to be the most helpful. This tool is empathy.

Empathy is not to be confused with sympathy. Sympathy is the acknowledgment of one's actions or feelings. Empathy is more powerful, it is the understanding of another's purpose because of the idea that you are personally experiencing it with them, in their shoes.

Empathy is a gateway to developing a connection, a relationship. It is one of the most crucial things needed for survival, connections and guidance. For some kids, it's very hard to find. To have a relationship with their parents, their teachers, their friends, and those involved with jobs and school can teach them and enhance them for when they are dependent on only themselves.

Being such a crucial tool, when conflict arises it seems to be lost during the struggle. Where there are only sides, no in-betweens, no negotiating or trying to reason, this is when bringing people together, helping them, isn't the goal anymore and pulls everyone further apart.

Empathy isn't something that can solve a problem, it is a tool to allow people to open their eyes, their ears, and their hearts to those that need it or may not know they need it.

The benefits of empathy may still be confusing for some. The following bullet points show why as humans it is unquestionably important to develop empathy as a natural skill.

Empathy will help us to understand the needs and situations of the people around us.

One will be more likely to treat those the way one want to be treated.

More open to connections and relationships with the people around us, and more beneficial to learning and new experiences.

Communication and listening skills will become stronger, learning to closely read what a person is really saying, instead of making assumptions.

Empathy humanizes the 'other', instead of creating distance with something that is beneath us.

These are just a few of the benefits where empathy can maximize the development of understanding other people. This is important when trying to create relationships and connections between each other. Empathy is also good for inquiry into a person's work, action, or words.

Empathy isn't something that can solve a problem, it is a tool to allow people to open their eyes, their ears, and their hearts to those that need it or may not know they need it. It opens people to be more connected and knowledgeable to other people, even if they aren't in agreement about their beliefs or ideas or lives. It's a stepping stone to not only be connected but to grow as a good human being. And we all know that we need a lot more of those in this world.

Diploma Programme graduate Kristen Leer (also known as K.A. Leer) is from the United States and is a Milwaukee, Wisconsin native. She has a passion to help and be engaged with her community.
Leer believes there is a story in everyone that needs to be heard and her writing is dedicated to revealing the tribulations of humanity that are often forgotten. She is currently studying psychology and plans to pursue a PhD.
Have a great story to tell? Write to alumni.relations@ibo.org and learn more about the IB Alumni Network at ibo.org/alumni.

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Empathy: How it can re-establish the connection between people

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We invite IB Diploma Programme (DP) graduates to reflect on their lives and studies. Kristen Leer received her diploma from Ronald Reagan High School, US. Learn more about the IB Alumni Network at ibo.org/alumni. By Kristen Leer There is something different between our 21st century existence and that of the past.

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"Settle down," you say above the screaming.

It sounds more like a threat than a caring suggestion.

"I don't know how!" your child jeers back.

You shake your head, sighing. How many times do you need to remind her to take a deep breath when she's upset?

Obviously, something's missing here.

Big Feelings. Big Confusion.

Big feelings like anger, frustration, jealousy, anxiety, sadness, and stress can be overwhelming to kids. Without warning, their body is flooded with physical sensations - racing heart, tense muscles, sweat, tingling fingers.

Plus, their thoughts can get pretty confusing, " I hate you, mom!" on the outside may conflict with, "Wait, what? I don't hate my mom, why did I just say that?" on the inside.

When we step back, it's easy to see why some kids feel so helpless when it comes to managing big feelings.

One way to empower your child (and to reassure them that they are totally normal), is to teach them about the brain.

Introducing...the Brain.

Here is a very simplified explanation of the brain and how it works. You can alter this script depending on the age and developmental stage of your child.

(Of course, there are people who actually study the brain, and they have much more detailed explanations of these principles if you're interested.)

The Brain has Lots of Jobs:

What to tell your kids: "Have you ever thought about all of the things your brain is in charge of? I mean, your brain is the control center for pretty much everything you think, feel, or do! That's pretty amazing. Let's list some things your brain controls."

For you: Keep this in mind when thinking about discipline. Changing your response can change the entire conversation, simply because you've appealed to a different part of the brain.

Their Brain is Growing and Changing:

What to tell your kids: "Scientists say that when you do something over and over you create new pathways in your brain. When you were a baby, you couldn't do much, but now your brain has learned so many things. And, guess what? Your brain is going to keep growing and changing until you're much older."

For you: You have the opportunity to influence strong, healthy, positive connections in your child's brain by responding from a calm, confident, empathetic stance. (Feel like it's too late? Start now!)

"Thinking" Part:

What to tell your kids: "Remember when we talked about the brain having a lot of different jobs? One part of your brain is in charge of making good decisions, managing your big feelings, thinking things through, and being empathetic. One author calls this your 'upstairs brain' - like the upstairs of a house!"

For you: Sorry parents, this part is very slow to develop. I know you want your kids to have these skills right.now. but there's no rushing this process. You can influence good pathways, though, remember?

"Emotional" Part:

What to tell your kids: "Ok, so there's another part of the brain. That author calls it the 'downstairs brain.' This part is in charge of some really important things like breathing and digesting food, and it also holds a lot of your emotions! So, this is where your big angry or worried feelings come from!"

For you: This is the most primitive and reactive part of the brain. This is also the part that's running the show during your child's meltdown about having peas for dinner.

Flight, Fight or Freeze:

What to tell your kids: "Inside this 'downstairs brain' is a tiny part who's job is to react to threats! When it thinks you are in danger it will tell you to do one of three things - run away, fight back, or freeze. Let's think of some times when these responses would be really helpful."

For you: You have this part in your brain too, it's called the amygdala! Power struggles are often the result of two amygdala's going head-to-head (so to speak).

Empowering Your Kids.

Now that you've laid the foundation, you can use this information to teach and talk about their thoughts, feelings and behaviors in terms of their brain function.

Sometimes the Brain is Wrong:

What to tell your kids: "There are times when your brain thinks there's a problem, and sends you the signals to 'fight, flight or freeze' but there's really no reason to panic.

Like when you see a big black thing on the floor of your room. Your body might freeze - not wanting to get any closer. You might scream, 'Mom! There's a huge spider in here!' But, when we get down on the floor, we realize it is actually a piece of black fuzz!"

For you: This is true for you as well! Sometimes, your brain will tell you that the situation in front of you requires IMMEDIATE ATTENTION ( sibling rivalry, aggressive behavior, etc.) Actually, in most cases, these things are not true emergencies.

Building a Bridge:

What to tell your kids: "I know it's scary when you have such big feelings. That 'downstairs brain' is really loud. It will say things like, 'Math test! Panic!' or 'Your sister has the TV remote! Grab it!' But remember, you still have the 'upstairs brain!' We're going to work together to switch from the 'downstairs brain' to the 'upstairs brain' when you're feeling big feelings. Can you help me think of some things that may help?"

For you: If you know your child is responding from the "downstairs brain" it's time to switch tactics and get the "upstairs brain" on board. You can do this by responding with empathy, getting down to their level, and offering connection.

Calm Brains make good choices:

What to tell your kids: "Since the 'downstairs brain' is not always right and tends to over-react in some situations, we need to make sure we use the 'upstairs brain' to make decisions. I know this is hard to remember when the 'downstairs brain' is in charge, but we are going to practice and I'll help you through it."

For you: Instead of focusing on getting your child to calm down, think more about how you can calm your own "upstairs brain." You'll be better able to support, connect and empathize with your child's big feelings.

Parenting And The Brain

Now, you and your child have a shared language to use when talking about big feelings, big actions, or big worries.

But remember, this is not just about your child. There are a lot of things you can do to encourage strong, healthy, happy brain development...even if your child is too young, or not interested in learning about the brain:

If you'd like to know more about how you can use this language to support your child, online Parent Coaching may be a good fit for you! Learn more about Parent Coaching

Click these titles to read more about the brain:

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What anxious and angry kids need to know about their brain

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"Settle down," you say above the screaming. It sounds more like a threat than a caring suggestion. "I don't know how!" your child jeers back. You shake your head, sighing. How many times do you need to remind her to take a deep breath when she's upset? Obviously, something's missing here.

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Catlin Tucker confers with a student during N.E.W. school. ( Katrina Schwartz)

Great ideas and extraordinary teaching happen in public school classrooms all over the country, but these pockets of innovation often don't get the attention they deserve. More often the schools held up as models for the future of learning started with a carefully articulated vision around change, a hand-picked staff, and even some startup capital. Changing the traditional approaches to teaching and learning that have been in place for decades within an existing school is extremely difficult work.

But passionate teachers and leaders are doing just that. Catlin Tucker has been teaching at Windsor High School for 14 years. She started out as the kind of teacher who had every lesson planned out to the minute; the kind of teacher who assigned lots of writing at home, graded everything meticulously, and had very high expectations of students. She was in control of her classroom, but she found that often her students were disengaged.

Over several years she began to experiment with using technology to give her students more ways to engage with material and more choice over how they demonstrated their understanding. But the more she tried to innovate within her standard high school English classroom, the more she felt that the structure and system itself weren't serving kids well. She wanted to shake it up even more.

My new classroom! Let the movement, exploration, collaboration & creation begin! #BackToSchool pic.twitter.com/XWhqzLM1X3

- Catlin Tucker (@Catlin_Tucker) August 18, 2016

"I did feel like in some ways I had reached the edges of what I could do that was different in an English classroom," Tucker said. She was even thinking about leaving teaching to become a professional development consultant full time - something she does part time now - until she saw Will Richardson keynote an all-staff professional development day at her school.

"I sat there and he just spoke to me, to everything that concerns me about education, and the way we're shuttling kids through classes and losing so many of them, and how we have to reimagine learning for kids of this generation." Tucker said. She immediately went to her principal and asked to pilot a very different type of learning experience within Windsor High School.
N.E.W. SCHOOL
Windsor works on a "core" model where one group of students share the same English, science and history teacher as a way to create smaller communities within the big comprehensive high school. This schedule allowed Tucker to team up with Marika Neto, a science teacher, to offer the Next Evolution of Work-based Learning core, or N.E.W. school.

The two teachers share a mix of 60 freshmen and sophomores, teaching them English, science and a technology elective in an interdisciplinary way. Tucker and Neto develop themed units that connect concepts of the science curriculum with the books they are reading and the writing they are doing. For example, in a mental health unit students learned about the neurobiology of mental health disorders and applied that understanding to their reading of "Romeo and Juliet."

Each student psychoanalyzed a character, using research to back up claims about how the character's actions and words indicate they may have had a specific mental disorder. At the same time, students also had to do a project educating a specific audience on some aspect of mental health. Students could work together or alone, and had a lot of freedom to choose how and what they would dive into.

For a Mental Health unit project these girls raised $800 for homeless packs. The power of project-based learning! @Catlin_Tucker #NEWSchool pic.twitter.com/dSrpNKsaD2

- Marika Neto (@MarikaNeto) December 16, 2016

One student made an infographic in Spanish and English to educate the Spanish-speaking community about the dangers of depression and where people can get help locally. Another group wanted to build a life-size mannequin that could show what anxiety looks like in the body. They weren't sure how to realize their vision, so they formally reached out to the engineering teacher for help programming a device that would light up when certain parts of the brain trigger or when the heartbeat accelerates.

"These girls were never interested in programming and now they're doing it on their off-time just to complete this project," said Marika Neto. She's been amazed at how deeply students are willing to examine a topic when they have the freedom to choose something that interests them and can show their learning in various ways. That's especially apparent in science; many students claimed they used to hate science, but are loving it the way Neto teaches.
THE SCHEDULE
Tucker and Neto have their N.E.W. students only every other day, but on core days students are with them for a 4½-hour block that the teachers can program however they want. The co-teachers put together a slide deck for every day with each activity, links to resources, and transition times. Students are responsible for looking at the deck and independently transitioning between activities. Sometimes half the students will work on a science lesson while the other half work on a writing assignment. Other times all 60 kids have "My time" to work on anything they need to get done.

The effect is that there's no herding students from room to room based on a bell schedule. Visitors to class don't always know what students are working on unless they ask, and often one student will be doing different work from her neighbor.

Tucker and Neto don't formally assign homework, but they try to give lots of work time in class. And students often do extra work on their projects at home if they haven't been focused in class or they aren't satisfied with their work. Tucker has also tried as much as possible not to collect and grade work at home. Instead, she synchronously edits student writing in Google Docs. She believes that giving students real-time actionable feedback as they are drafting benefits them more than when she stamps a grade on at the end. Too often students never look at that feedback again.

And because Tucker and Neto have complete control of the schedule of N.E.W. core, they can invite outside experts in, plan field trips and generally enrich what happens in the classroom by connecting students to other resources at Windsor High or out in the community at large.
BREAKING DEPENDENCE
One of the big goals of the N.E.W. program is to create a learning environment where students are empowered and supported to be independent learners. That can be a challenge for students arriving to the program with eight or nine years of experiences with teachers who tell them exactly how to do well. Students in the N.E.W. program struggled with the freedom of the program at first and asked for more direct instruction.

"In middle school it was more like you sit down, they teach you, you memorize everything, you do your work and that's it, you're out," said Natali, a freshman in the program. "But here it was more, I wouldn't say self-taught, but as a student you really had to buckle down yourself if you really wanted to get it done."

One of the big ways Tucker and Neto are trying to build student ownership of learning is through the grading system. They are aware that any pedagogical approach must be s upported by an assessment policy that furthers the same goals. The grading policy in a classroom can easily send a conflicting message to students if teachers don't think it through carefully.

At the beginning of each unit Tucker identifies the key English and technology standards and Neto picks the science ones. They put those targets in a spreadsheet with columns for students to self-evaluate on each skill, as well as columns for teachers to give feedback and evaluation. Every week students have time to reflect on the work they've done and to give themselves a grade 1-4 that indicates how well they believe they are meeting the standard. Crucially, they also have to say why they believe that grade is appropriate and link to work samples as evidence.

"The doc is meant to be an ongoing silent conversation between the two of us," Tucker said. If she goes through and gives a student a 2, that's not the end of the conversation. The student can then take that feedback, make changes to the work, update his column and ask for the teacher to look again. This process encourages students to constantly reflect on what they are doing well, what they can improve, and to actively use teacher feedback to revise work.

"Throughout the unit they're constantly being asked to look at their body of work, look at the skills we're targeting, and identify what pieces reflect their growth or their proficiency, or their developing proficiency in relation to a particular standard," Tucker said.

Since Windsor is a traditional public school, Tucker and Neto have to report out grades every six weeks. At that time they conduct grading interviews with each student in which the student presents the grade she thinks she deserves and evidence to support that claim. The teacher comes with her own grade and evidence, and the two have a conversation about it.

"The first time I did a grading interview I was like so nervous," said Josh, a sophomore student. "But then by the second time it was much more relaxed. And I'm like, OK, I'm just showing what I've done and I should be proud of it." He appreciates that he has a voice in the process and that his grade isn't arbitrarily decided by his teacher.

"I think those conversations were some of the scariest things we've asked them to do because they're not asked to think about their learning that way, articulate where they're at in their learning, and what they think their grade should be," Tucker said. Students are having to retrain themselves to use those types of metacognitive skills, which is a big shift for them.

A conversation after a grade-less interview "It is nice to not be defined by doing bad on one assignment; instead the focus is on my growth"

- Marika Neto (@MarikaNeto) September 28, 2016

This approach has also been an adjustment for parents who generally were educated in a more traditional system. They have become accustomed to classrooms where every assignment is graded, and if their child misses an assignment or performs poorly on a test it can start to create a hole in their grade. And, for parents whose children did well in the traditional system, but are adjusting to the independence and autonomy of N.E.W. school, all the changes can be a little scary.

"She was struggling at the beginning," said Carrie Carstensen of her daughter. "And I thought, how is this going to look on her report card? Are her grades going to go down because this is something completely different and new and challenging?'"

Ultimately, Carstensen decided she'd rather her daughter learn the content deeply, even if her grades aren't as strong, in the hopes that the many other skills she's learning in the hands-on, project-based and tech-savvy program will serve her well later. It doesn't hurt that her daughter is much more excited about school now.

Other parents were thrown by the idea that students can go back, revise and improve an initial grade. While foreign to many parents at first, it was not unwelcome.

"They're trying to teach them that you might start off with a 1 and you're a straight-A student because there's so much room to grow," said Toni Rooney, a freshman parent. "And so when they give them increases in their number, I feel like it means more to them."

Rooney has been impressed with the passion for learning that the N.E.W. core has brought out in her daughter, Brooke. While Brooke was never a struggling student, she also didn't particularly like school. Now Brooke is excited to talk with her mom about what she's learning, how she's tackling projects and the improvements she's made.

"My other son spends hours sitting at his desk doing homework and I don't think he's getting more from his education," said Dianne Wagner, Josh's mom. Josh has a twin brother who is in a more traditional honors-track core. Wagner likes that Josh's schoolwork not only excites him, but that he's becoming a well-rounded person who can collaborate, juggle project deadlines on his own, communicate about his work and take ownership. And, she likes that when he's home from school he has time to help out with chores and hang out with his family because he's not so stressed out by how much homework he has.

"What they do here in N.E.W. core is they figure out how to apply the knowledge that they need to learn to the life that they have in front of them, and connecting those dots makes that information more valuable," Wagner said.
ROOM TO STRETCH
Tucker and Neto originally conceived of the N.E.W. core as a way to reach the many students for whom school is "not super stimulating." Connecting the curriculum to the real world, giving students choice, making science more hands-on and fun, and building in a lot of collaboration are all ways these teachers are trying to shake up the traditional model in order to re-engage kids who haven't experienced a lot of success in school or who are already checked out.

And while there are many students in the program who are thriving in that new environment when they might not have elsewhere, one surprise has been how well the model works for students who also excel at traditional school. Tucker initially worried that having such a broad array of learners in one hectic space would make it hard to challenge her high-flyers, but they've told her the opposite.

"I have had experiences in past classes where I would do an assignment and I wasn't super excited about it, but I would still get an A," said sophomore Samantha Moberly. Samantha is the kind of student who would probably do well anywhere, but she says the freedom she has to pursue her interests motivates her much more than a grade (although she still cares about those, too). "I'm actually working to get to a point where I'm really satisfied with my work. And because I'm grading myself, I'm not just stopping at a point where I know I would get a certain grade. I go until I'm satisfied," she said.

That attitude has allowed her to pursue some impressive projects. In science, Neto gave groups of students corn on the cob, canned corn or packaged corn, and told them they needed to design a lab from the ground up under the theme of nutrition. The "Iron Chef Lab" required students to come up with an interesting question, write a hypothesis, develop lab procedures and carry out the experiment. On top of that, Neto tasked students with identifying specific skills they would need for their labs so she could run skills stations to support them.

Samantha's group had packaged corn, so they decided to test for the effects of Bisphenol A (BPA) - commonly found in plastic - on their corn. They couldn't buy BPA, so they asked the AP Chemistry teacher for help extracting BPA from a plastic water bottle so they could use it in their lab.

"They are thinking outside the box and they're being creative and they're having that natural inquiry and they're not just looking to check the box," Neto said. Ultimately, the BPA didn't have any effect on the corn, but the group learned a lot along the way. In their reflection, students proposed various other ways they would do the experiment if they had different materials and more time. Needless to say, Samantha's group won the Iron Chef Lab.

Be The Change You Want to See By Shifting Traditional High School

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Be The Change You Want to See By Shifting Traditional High School

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Great ideas and extraordinary teaching happen in public school classrooms all over the country, but these pockets of innovation often don't get the attention they deserve. More often the schools held up as models for the future of learning started with a carefully articulated vision around change, a hand-picked staff, and even some startup capital.

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In a house where there is no cable television we often find our news through trending topics on Facebook. After we read post after post about the video release, my husband, 15-year-old son, 17-year-old daughter and I sat on the couch leaning towards my laptop and watched the video. And just like a scene from a "cops and robbers" movie, we watched the police officer drive up to the "bad guy" with a gun, jump out the car and shoot him. Except this was not a movie, and the "bad guy" was 12-year-old Tamir Rice, the gun was a fake gun and he, like thousands of boys for generations before him may have been playing a pretend version of "cops and robbers". But his version didn't end in him getting the bad guy before he was called in for dinner. Tamir Rice's shooting affected us differently because of his age. The idea that there is no age in which black boys are safe to even play in a park was particularly a hard blow.

Immediately recognizing the impact watching this can have, I looked at my son's body language and in retrospect it was almost like a dance of tragedy: his face dropped, followed by his head then his shoulders slumped and he walked away, almost swaying his body as his head shook left to right. This has been a dance repeated over and and over again in my house, now theater. My African-American theater that stages the bodies of black men and boys. The backstage that hosts black women who worry daily for them. And over and over we all participate in this dance as a procession of unarmed black men and boys are killed in America. One after another, carried across the stage view of our TVs and computers.

16 year old Ihsan Abdussabur

Last week Jayson Negron, a young man my son's age was killed in Bridgeport CT, just 40 minutes away from our city and the dance began again. The conviction or exoneration of the officer that shot him does not change the initial trauma of the news of the death. You can't un-see the video of his body laying on the street handcuffed and bleeding with a white police officer standing over him. The recent circulation of a video of a young black girl being hung by white teens has begun a debate of its authenticity but the argument of it being real or fake is inconsequential to the trauma it causes when someone views it. You cannot un-see those images and once they are seen, your brain processes them in irreversible ways that causes mental and physiological damage.

I am acutely aware of the effect that visual images have on the minds and brains of black people in America. The brainwashing that occurs rarely seeing yourself reflected in the joy displayed in TV ads and in magazines. The siphon that drains hope, drop by drop, when seeing different shades of your melanin as criminals, vixens and perpetrators. We made a conscious decision four years ago get rid of cable TV for this reason. But the internet has all but undone the good that came from removing the constant stream of bad news on repeat. In some ways the internet has streamlined and visualized the worse of those images, with no filter - and it has been traumatic.

Recently my now 16-year-old son recognized this and wrote a Facebook post to express both his frustration and his need for self-care.

"...Facebook needs a better filter, I'm scrolling passed people getting shot on Facebook live, people committing suicide, and girl now a girl getting hanged by the KKK; and in the caption it says people "hope" authorities take notice.

People are (normalizing) suicide through memes 60 percent of the time, 39 percent of the time something is disturbing or crazy offensive, and 1 percent of the time something is actually funny. I know comedy goes in ways of how you see things and your perspective, and some people might get offended, but I'm sure people can agree school shooter, and suicide memes aren't funny once you realize lives were lost and will be lost because of it.

...after seeing a girl get hanged by some white guy with the confederate flag behind him, and her struggling to survive while it's recorded is f*cking enough. That video was beyond awful and it's proof that everything over 398 years have (an effect) today. I don't know why anyone is getting hanged in 2017, it could even be a white person and I would have the same reaction. Maybe called an N word, maybe even put in the hospital for being black, but hanged...no.

...I just want to say to anyone who cares, think about what's acceptable on social media cause now stuff is out of hand. I'm gonna delete this app for a few weeks or a few months or maybe forever. So if anyone messages me or tags me in anything I won't see it.

I just can't help to see a girl holding her neck as she's raised from a rope around her neck from every corner in my own house.

May everyone have peace, and happiness to the oppressed and to the oppressors, to the confused and the informed, and to the killed and even to the people who initiated the violence.💚 Much love, bye."

Reading this as his mother gave me both immense sadness and comfort. I felt helpless knowing that there is little I can do to protect my child from his own melanin, how American society looks at my son walking down the street, how his employment application will be viewed, or his guilt will be determined. Despite our effort to give our children a two parent household, fill the shelves with hundreds of books, emphasize education, facilitate ethnically diverse social circles, provide an upper middle class socioeconomic environment, pray with them, sit down to family dinners and be present in their daily lives, we still cannot protect them from being black, and the guilt assumed because of their abundance of melanin.

But I am comforted by the fact, that I raised a thoughtful, introspective child who's conscious enough to know that self-care is critical to his survival. And that a method of self-care is choosing his environment, including his internet environment. Trying to strike a balance between staying informed and staying sane is a struggle we have all had in the last few years, and my son showed me that self-care is not just possible but necessary. His decision to take a break from Facebook was a radical act of self-care.

My husband and I have four children between the ages of 16 and 23 and have made intentional effort to maintain an open line of communication about current issues with them. We talk openly and honestly about what's happening, why, and allow them to express their concerns, fears and ways they are coping with it all. We try to always leave time in the conversation to discuss solutions both as a society and on a personal level.

As parents deeply concerned about the America we are creating for our future grandchildren, who will be black in America no matter who our children choose to marry, we impress on our young people that they should think about how they will impact the world and look for ways they can make the world a better place. But that starts with taking care of your own physical, mental and spiritual wellness. You can not give from an empty cup.

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Black Boys Coping with the Trauma of Watching Black People Die

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In a house where there is no cable television we often find our news through trending topics on Facebook. After we read post after post about the video release, my husband, 15-year-old son, 17-year-old daughter and I sat on the couch leaning towards my laptop and watched the video.

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Post by WeAreTeachers.

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If you know anything about New Orleans public schools, you probably know this: Hurricane Katrina wiped them out and almost all the schools became privately run charters.

Many of those schools subscribed to the no excuses discipline model - the idea that if you crack down on slight misbehavior, you can prevent bigger issues from erupting.

That was also true of Crocker College Prep, an elementary school in New Orleans. It had strict rules about everything. Students had to sit up straight at their desks, eyes tracking the speaker. They had to walk the halls in silence and even wear the right kind of socks. Students who broke these rules, or acted out in other ways, were punished.

The thing is, students across New Orleans face high rates of exposure to trauma, but school discipline policies have rarely accounted for that.

Crocker College Prep is now one of five New Orleans charter schools in a collective to become more trauma-informed. That means Crocker aims to account for the social, emotional and behavioral needs of all students, and their lives outside of school.

The Institute of Women and Ethnic Studies found that kids in New Orleans screen positive for post-traumatic stress disorder at more than three times the national rate. The institute also found that up to half of all kids have dealt with homicide in some way, with 20 percent actually witnessing murder. And then there's the city's high poverty rate - about 40 percent of kids living below the poverty line. The state's high incarceration rate means many children have a parent behind bars.

"Generally there just was really not an understanding of how trauma impacts a child," says Paulette Carter, president and CEO of the Children's Bureau of New Orleans, a mental health agency for kids and families.

"Teachers and school staff really look at children through the lens of, 'What's wrong with that child?' Versus, 'What happened to that child?' "

Carter says schools, because they have so many children dealing with many different issues, often don't think about the reasons behind behaviors. Mental health workers, like her, though, have learned a lot recently about how trauma changes the brain.

"A kid who's been exposed to trauma ... that fight or flight response is much more developed and stronger," Carter says.

"If I'm walking down the hallway and somebody bumps into me, and I don't have a significant trauma history, I'm gonna say 'Oh, sorry, excuse me,' " she explains. "Whereas a kid who's been exposed to trauma on an ongoing basis, if somebody bumps into them that might be a threat." From there, she says, the survival brain kicks in and reasoning and logic shut down.

Crocker has developed ways to help students who are dealing with those experiences. Two full-time social workers hold one-on-one sessions with students who need someone to talk to. Teachers send disruptive students to a room called the wellness center for a meditative time-out that's not supposed to be punishment.

If students fight, they first work it out through group discussion. Kids who act up or shut down get extra support, not detention or suspension like they used to. The idea is to tend to life troubles at school, instead of sending kids home.

Sherlae

Sherlae stands in her bedroom and digs through a desk drawer. It's filled with pencils and Sharpies. They're some of the 13-year-old's most cherished possessions, because Sherlae, who goes to Crocker College Prep, loves to write. She fills thick, spiral notebooks with song lyrics and original poetry.

"Most of the time I write my poetry on my bed because it gives me a lot of thoughts right there," Sherlae says.

We're using Sherlae's middle name to protect her privacy.

A while back she says her mom stormed into her room, grabbed all her school work and writing, and threw it in a dumpster down the street.

She opens another desk drawer, stuffed full of paper. "I save all my writing in here," she says. "Because I don't want my mom to throw it away."

Sherlae says sometimes her mom is great. She'll take her swimming, or riding bikes and they'll have a "sunshiny day."

But there are times when her mom goes off her medication, or drinks too much. "She just turns into a different person," Sherlae says. "And it's like, 'Do I even know you anymore?' "

Sherlae's grandmother, Marie - whose middle name we're also using - has been watching her since she was 3 years old. They're close.

Marie says that a few years ago, Sherlae and her mom were evicted and her mom began cycling in and out of jail. That's when Sherlae's grades started to drop.

We reached out to Sherlae's mom, but she declined to speak with us for this story.

Some children respond to trauma by disrupting class, starting fights, storming out into the hallways. But when Sherlae's upset, she completely shuts down. "When you should worry about me is when I'm not paying attention in class," she says.

During those times she says she's thinking about her mom. "Why is she doing this and why is it happening to me?"

At Crocker, Sherlae gets help.

"I think she's a really easy kid to just fly under the radar," says Rochelle Gauthier, one of two full-time staff social workers at the school. "Because she's not a behavior problem. She's not causing a lot of disruption."

But Sherlae was hurting. She had to repeat the fourth grade. Her grandmother asked the school for help and Gauthier was assigned.

"I went and pulled her from class, introduced myself, brought her to my office," Gauthier says.

When you should worry about me is when I'm not paying attention in class.

Sherlae remembers that day, too: "She was just wondering, like, what makes you sad when you're in class? What makes you not focus in class? What makes you not be happy?"

The two set up regular appointments. They'd talk through feelings and come up with coping mechanisms, like writing poetry.

"You know, really sadly, kids who struggle with serious depression, who fly under the radar, can end up in the hospital for harming themselves or potentially dead as well," Gauthier says.

That's something Sherlae says she's thought about.

"My depression about my mom got to the point where one time I said I wanted to hurt myself."

She'd had an extremely painful interaction with her mom. "She said she didn't want me around. Like she was saying that she didn't want me in the world anymore and stuff like that."

Gauthier made her sign a contract promising she wouldn't harm herself and got her into more intensive counseling.

Crocker makes an effort to catch quiet kids like Sherlae. Teachers fill out a form for each student, noting things like whether they get easily distracted or seem overly nervous. Teachers also track students' behavior. If they notice a big change, they can tell a social worker. And teachers are now trained to recognize signs of trauma.

Sherlae is still dealing with trauma. But, "after three years of getting lots of counseling and support, I'm noticing, even as those situations continue to happen at home, she's developed so many strong skills and has a support network that it's not affecting her as much as it to used to," Gauthier says.

Last spring, after years of bad grades, Sherlae reached into her purple backpack and surprised her grandma with a great report card. She wants to keep up the good work, but she knows it's up to her to stay steady. That report card was one of the things her mom threw in the trash.

Principal Boykins

It's a Wednesday morning at Crocker College Prep and Principal Nicole Boykins is posted up on the second floor hallway. Every few seconds she calls to kids to tuck in shirts, to stop running. Then a teacher walks up with third grader. The student is fuming.

"Shane, what's up?" Boykins asks.

He mumbles that he doesn't want to be in class.

Rochelle Gauthier is there in the hallway, too. She reminds the boy of some recent success. "We just had a great outing on Friday. We got to go to the basketball game and do all that because you had two good days."

The encouragement doesn't work. Shane runs into the stairwell. Boykins goes after him and gets on a school walkie-talkie, asking for help.

"Shane has been struggling," she says, describing a meeting just days before between herself, a social worker, a student dean and Shane's mom.

"Mom thinks Shane is struggling because dad was just sentenced to 20 years," Boykins says. While in jail in New Orleans, awaiting sentencing, Shane could visit his father. But the sentencing meant he was transferred to a prison many hours' drive away. "And now we're struggling significantly," Boykins says.

This kind of work takes a lot of energy. Three or four staff members might tag team to help one troubled student on any given day. Boykins might spend half her work day working on behavior.

I could give him a 30-minute lunch detention, but do you really think that's going to remedy what his issues are?

She started as a first grade teacher at Crocker. Now she's in charge of about 550 pre-K through eighth grade students.

Since Katrina, it's become rare for school leaders to be from New Orleans. Boykins grew up in a neighborhood called Hollygrove, known for patches of violent crime. She says no one talked to her about being a good student or going to college.

"Being from New Orleans, I've experienced a certain level of trauma," says Boykins, "whether in my own home or outside the door." She credits coping skills learned at an early age with her success in school and her ability to take on this job. "Nothing really rattles me."

She was the middle child, with an older and younger brother. As a kid, she got into a magnet school for junior high and high school. She became the first in her family to graduate from college and then went on get a master's degree in education. She can't really tell you how she did it, other than saying she kept her head down and worked hard.

As principal at Crocker, though, she has had to get specific about what coping skills are, how to foster them in her students, and what each child needs.

"A lot of times teachers want students punished because they say you've wronged me as a teacher," says Boykins. "But remove yourself from the situation and think about what that student needs. Even the students who give teachers the most grief want to be here."

She describes a student who walked from Elysian Fields Avenue to get to Crocker, a several mile walk.

"I could give him a 30-minute lunch detention," says Boykins, "But do you really think that's going to remedy what his issues are? ... He walked miles to get here. Why?"

Boykins keeps in mind the disproportionate number of black males in New Orleans who get incarcerated. On her bulletin board, next to inspirational quotes and a picture of her own young son, she also keeps a letter from her brother.

It's post-marked as inmate mail from Bossier Correctional Facility where her brother went about a year ago. The letter included a list of strict regulations at the prison. Boykins reads it to students, along with excerpts from the letter.

" 'As for me, I'm hanging in there,' " she recites from the page. " 'This place where I'm at is so intense. It's set up so you give up, but I can't let them get me.' "
This story was reported with support from the Center for Health Journalism.

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When Schools Meet Trauma With Understanding, Not Discipline

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If you know anything about New Orleans public schools, you probably know this: Hurricane Katrina wiped them out and almost all the schools became privately run charters. Many of those schools subscribed to the no excuses discipline model - the idea that if you crack down on slight misbehavior, you can prevent bigger issues from erupting.

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When I was about six years old, I called my older brother a slew of four-letter words. My wise grandmother took me aside and told me, "There are no bad words, but some words make other people feel bad. The words you just used are OK to say if you are all alone, but never with other people." The obvious point she made was that it's wrong to hurt others. This was consistent with the way I was raised, although I never was and am not always able to live up to this important value.

In fact, it took me 50 years to fully understand the real meaning of what she was saying. Her most important lesson was how much power we give to words. This power leads to control. Words have no power on their own. It's the emotional connection we attribute to certain words that allow them to heal, express love, or infuriate us. Many words are so strong in their power that people lose jobs and are even killed because of them.

Words with this kind of power typically involve anti-Semitism, racism, religious defamation, sexual orientation, or cultural attacks. Children in school have additional words that can invite a violent reaction, including making fun of the way people look, a comment about family members (especially mothers), disabilities, gang affiliation, or dress. Most teachers have to deal with both insults and their aftermath on a regular basis. Fighting is one of the most serious social problems facing schools today.

I know three effective ways to reduce the power of insults to children. I developed these from what I learned from my grandmother those many years ago. The principle is to reduce the emotional connection from the words. If we take away the power of those words, they can no longer control us. Children and adults have incredible difficulty in learning how to do this, but it can change our lives in a most powerful way: we stop allowing others to control our behavior.

My co-author Allen Mendler and I have taught teachers the following three sets of skills. Many teachers have told me that they didn't believe these techniques had any chance of working with their students. Later, the same teachers told me that after trying them, these ideas worked much better than expected. I hope you're willing to give them a chance. You have nothing to lose.

1. Substitute a New Mental Image

This technique works best with younger students. Have them think of all the words that hurt their feelings. Make a master list. Then teach them to imagine the person saying these mean words in a clown outfit, or with bananas sticking out of their ears. You can use any image that looks ridiculous. Alternately, teach them to hear "your mother" as "your banana." It takes weeks of practice, but kids can learn to replace hateful emotions with silly ones, ones that elicit laugher. This might not work with all of your students, but it will work with many, especially if you take the time to practice.

2. Understand Why a Student Wants to Insult You

With older students, Al Mendler suggests writing two questions on the board:

What are some things that other students can say or do to you that really make you angry? (The most common answer given is "your mama.")

Why do they say or do these things?

Discussion of this second question includes further questions like:

Are they saying this because they're interested in how your mother is doing?

Are they saying these things because they want you to be happy?

Are they trying to help you?

Eventually, the students -- even the toughest ones -- conclude that these things are said or done to make you feel bad, to hurt you. Then, each student needs to think of what to say or do to show that they refuse to be hurt and will not respond. Students typically develop responses to aggression with statements like:

I'd like to punch you in the face, but you're not worth it.

It takes no courage to insult me, but I'll show you real courage by ignoring you.

I must have done something really bad to you to make you say these things. Maybe later when I'm not so angry, we can figure out what it is.

3. Understand the Power You Give to Your Tormentor

By responding to taunts with violence, we surrender power over our own feelings and actions. To help your students understand this surrender, discuss the following questions:

If somebody says something hurtful to you, do you have a right to be angry?

If you get angry and respond violently, do you think you are actually doing what your tormentor wants you to do? Doesn't he hope that you'll get angry enough to feel bad?

If someone wants to make you angry, and you do get angry, who is in control of your feelings?

Do you want to be controlled by someone who wants to hurt you?

If you have a right to be angry but want to be in control of how you act, what can you do?

These activities are all designed to teach students that words have the power to hurt only if they let them. We all have many choices about how to take control in hostile situations. The best of these choices require practice and reminders if we want them to work effectively.

How do you help your students deal with insulting language?

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Controlling the Power of Words: Teaching Students How to Confront Insults | Edutopia

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When I was about six years old, I called my older brother a slew of four-letter words. My wise grandmother took me aside and told me, "There are no bad words, but some words make other people feel bad. The words you just used are OK to say if you are all alone, but never with other people."

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Social & Emotional Learning (SEL)

Pivoting off the film Inside Out, here are strategies to help explore how joy, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust can help students.

We need all of our emotions for thinking, problem solving, and focused attention. We are neurobiologically wired, and to learn anything, our minds must be focused and our emotions need to "feel" in balance. Emotional regulation is necessary so that we can remember, retrieve, transfer, and connect all new information to what we already know. When a continuous stream of negative emotions hijacks our frontal lobes, our brain's architecture changes, leaving us in a heightened stress-response state where fear, anger, anxiety, frustration, and sadness take over our thinking, logical brains.

The 2015 film is an exceptional and accurate portrayal of our five core emotions. These primary emotions are joy, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. This film depicts how we use these emotions when difficult and happy experiences arise, and how we need the negative emotions just as much as the positive.

After reviewing the science behind Inside Out, I developed research-based educational neuroscience strategies, questions, and assessment ideas aligning with a few scenes from the film. In this post, we'll explore four categories representing the conceptual and developing brains of all children and adolescents. There is no recipe for successful implementation of these strategies, and each will be based on the grade level, teacher preparation time, class time, and mostly the enthusiasm that we bring when introducing these concepts to our students.

Neuroplasticity/Feelings

Neuroplasticity is the brain's capacity to rewire, strengthening pathways between neurons that are exercised and used while weakening connections between cellular pathways that are not used or retrieved. Rewiring our brain circuits is experience dependent -- we can change the synapses or connections that are firing by changing a perception or behavior.

Neuroplasticity includes reframing or reappraising an experience, event, or relationship so that we observe and experience a different outcome. What we perceive and expect is what we get! The brain sees and responds to perception, not reality. Negative lingering brain states can become neural traits that are hardwired into our circuitry. Neuroplasticity is the best news from neuroscience in recent years.

The processes that support emotional intelligence are addressed in the growing field of Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB). The theory behind IPNB provides a picture of human mental development and the potential for transformation that exists in changing thinking and processing of emotions, thoughts and behaviors (Siegel, 2001, 2006, 2007). The concept of emotional intelligence is interrelated with IPNB and the development of mindful awareness as a strategy for achieving healthy integration of emotional, psychological, physiological, and cognitive functioning (Davis & Hayes, 2011; Siegel, 2001, 2007).

In the film Inside Out, we are introduced to core memories. All of us are constantly creating memories, but what makes them core or significant are the emotions that we attach to these past events, experiences, and relationships. Emotions drive our attention and perception. We form positive and negative core memories because of the emotional intensity that we've attached to the event or experience.

The movie introduces us to the emotions mingling in 11-year-old Riley's brain. Her joyful core memories are represented by golden balls. At the beginning of the film, Riley's sadness interferes with these golden balls of joy-filled memories. When a core golden memory is touched by sadness, the gold fades to deep blue, and joy becomes frustrated. Later, we learn through Riley's various experiences that the blue and gold tones representing sadness and joy can work well together, weaving beautiful contrast to create a lasting core memory. These core memories are stored in "long-term" and eventually become a part of our Personality Islands, or what I have labeled as the Islands of Self.

The questions below are designed to ignite your creativity and thought processes as you integrate topics and standards into morning meetings, afternoon circles, and subject matter -- as you embrace the power of feelings and how they intimately affect learning, relationships, and behaviors.

Questions for Educators

1. What types of core memories could you create in your classrooms and buildings with students and teachers? These memories could be emotional, academic, or social, reflecting a new relationship, a novel way of attempting an assignment, or a collaboration project with others.

2. How can we create core memories that energize, pique curiosity, and bring joy to our students?

3. Are you teaching the students about their neuroanatomy?

4. Do students understand the negative role that stress plays in cognitive functioning with regard to learning, memorizing, and retrieving information?

5. How might we begin a class period or day with an emotional check-in? What is the weather in your brain? Could we use laminated notecards with the primary emotions for younger students and the primary and secondary emotions for older students? Students could display the feeling that they are holding as they begin class and note how it changes throughout the day.

Questions for Students

These questions were designed for promoting student discussion, self-reflection, and self-awareness. Dr. Dan Seigel's research reports that, "What is sharable is bearable."

Sadness helped Joy in the film, and your own Sadness can help you.

1. How do you cope with Sadness?
2. Can you use your Sadness to feel better? How?
3. What would happen if we never felt Sadness? Is it sometimes good to keep Sadness inside a circle so that it does not spread and get out of control? Why?

Fear and Anger can protect and motivate us.

4. When was Fear needed in your life?
5. How did Fear help you?
6. What is the perfect amount of Fear?
7. What happens to our thinking and problem solving when we carry too much Fear or Sadness?
8. How does Anger show up in your brain?
9. Has Anger ever helped you?
10. How do you typically handle your Anger?

Disgust keeps us from being poisoned physically and socially.

11. How has the feeling of Disgust helped you?
12. How has expressing Disgust hurt your relationships or experiences?

In the film, Joy plays the leading role among the feelings in Riley's brain.

13. Does Joy always play the leading role in our brains?
14. What happened when Joy and Sadness left headquarters?
15. How do we see Joy in your brain?
16. What creates Joy to take over your brain?

Imagine having no feelings at all.

17. What would life be like if we didn't have feelings?
18. Describe two positive changes in our life if we didn't have feelings.
19. Describe two negative changes that could occur in a life with no feelings.

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How Emotions Affect Learning, Behaviors, and Relationships

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Social & Emotional Learning (SEL) Pivoting off the film Inside Out, here are strategies to help explore how joy, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust can help students. We need all of our emotions for thinking, problem solving, and focused attention.

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Julie Baron

Clinical Social Worker, Adolescent Therapist, Former Middle School Counselor, Author

We know that adolescents are acutely aware of when adults are treating them with respect and when they aren't. We also know that engagement leads to successful academic outcomes and a greater sense of well-being for both the student and educator. If teens are more likely to engage with adults who respect them, it's safe to say that respect is essential to student learning.

When adolescents describe the ways in which they experience respect, they report that they want to feel challenged by being pushed beyond their comfort zone. They want adults to hold the bar high for them. They feel respected when adults listen and respond to them without judgment, and accept their beliefs and values, however different from their own. And when adults are responsive to their intellectual, physical, social, and emotional needs, adolescents feel this as genuine concern for their welfare, which in turn makes them feel valued.

But adolescents can be uniquely frustrating to many adults. The challenging developmental tasks of separating from adults and seeking their own identity often lead them to push adults away, refute adult guidance, and disagree even when it betrays all rationality. It is important for us not to overlook the developmental necessity of these behaviors and to understand them. In doing so, we express our respect for each teen.

We can demonstrate at least six specific skills to help create a respectful relationship with teens. While the value of respect in our work may seem a no-brainer, its consistent execution is a constant challenge.

1. Understand and respect the function of the behavior.

All behaviors have a function. When we put our detective hats on alongside adolescents, together we can figure out what's driving their behavior. Using curiosity in your tone will engage the teen and facilitate a move toward learning goals. Curiosity will make her feel valued and understood, and it provides an opportunity to model thoughtful problem solving.

2. Assess whether there may be a skills or performance deficit.

There are times when we may expect an adolescent to demonstrate a skill or behavior that he is still acquiring, and we may mistakenly assume that the ability exists and that he is just choosing not to use it. Similarly, if the teen has a skill, he may not be able to exhibit that skill consistently. This may be a performance deficit and also requires work toward the goal of more consistent demonstration. Using appropriate assessment tools or consulting with other professional disciplines to figure out various skill levels will help adults effectively and respectfully engage.

3. Assess motivation: know if your goals match their goals.

The perception that a teen is unmotivated is one of the top frustrations reported by adults who are trying to help. An important consideration here is whether the adolescent is motivated to do what we want her to do. All teens are motivated. Sometimes we just need to look a little deeper to find out what motivates them. When adults demonstrate interest in finding out what is important to the teen, they are more likely to link it in some way to the skills that they are trying to teach.

4. Find something positive about the adolescent.

In the midst of our anger and frustration, it is crucial to find something (anything!) that we can value about each adolescent. Remember that all qualities are akin to a two-sided coin -- the student who can't stay focused will also not likely harbor grudges and hold onto negative thinking. The diligent hyper-focused student may also perseverate on their mistakes and get stuck on details while losing site of the bigger picture. There is always an upside and a downside. When we can reflect back to teens something of value that we see in them, they will absorb it and feel respected.

5. Know your own triggers.

Without self-awareness, we cannot be effective, helpful adults. We need to know which types of kids we mesh with most easily, and which tend to push our buttons. Only then we can strive to treat them all fairly and consistently. The best way to maintain this balance is to take care of ourselves, seek support and guidance from supervisors and peers when we struggle, and use techniques like mindfulness and relaxation to remain balanced in thought and emotion.

6. Seek feedback.

Don't be afraid to ask for feedback from the teens that you serve. To effectively meet the needs of so many different adolescents, we should always seek and accept their feedback to make adjustments that will lead to productive outcomes. Whenever possible, be open to unsolicited feedback from teens. Keep in mind that their communication skills are still developing, and they may not always be as diplomatic or sensitive as we'd like. Consider their words an opportunity to understand their concerns in order to better meet their needs. Guide them on how best to communicate their concerns using respect toward us. When expressed in the spirit of respect, it will effectively engage both teen and adult in achieving learning and growth goals.

How do you show your students respect? How do they show you respect? Please share your ideas and experiences in the comments section below.

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Teen Engagement in Learning Starts With Respect

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Julie Baron Clinical Social Worker, Adolescent Therapist, Former Middle School Counselor, Author We know that adolescents are acutely aware of when adults are treating them with respect and when they aren't. We also know that engagement leads to successful academic outcomes and a greater sense of well-being for both the student and educator.

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In 1940, a white developer wanted to build a neighborhood in Detroit.

So he asked the US Federal Housing Administration to back a loan. The FHA, which was created just six years earlier to help middle-class families buy homes, said no because the development was too close to an "inharmonious" racial group.

Meaning black people.

It wasn't surprising. The housing administration refused to back loans to black people - and even people who lived around black people. FHA said it was too risky.

So the next year, this white developer had an idea: What if he built a 6-foot-tall, half-mile-long wall between the black neighborhood and his planned neighborhood? Is that enough separation to mitigate risk and get his loan?

When he did that, the housing administration backed the loan.

That was 75 years ago, but this type of racist housing policy helped create two divergent Americas

These policies are typically called redlining, in that they drew a bright red line between the areas where black families could and couldn't get loans.

Redlining poisoned the mortgage market for black people. It meant that black families were systematically forced to live in separate neighborhoods.

We often talk about increasing wealth inequality, with the rich getting richer and poor getting poorer. That's certainly a problem, but something we should be even more concerned about is what is happening to our neighborhoods. There are now more extremely poor neighborhoods and more extremely rich neighborhoods.

We're seeing two divergent Americas, one with money, and one without - and the one without is largely black. And the residents of that America are increasingly living in neighborhoods of extreme poverty, where 40 percent of residents live below the poverty line.

These are neighborhoods that struggle with high rates of crime, unemployment, and community health issues.

As it turns out, living in poor neighborhoods isn't just an inconvenience. It's a huge factor in what our lives - and our children's lives - turn out to be.

Research shows it's like breathing in bad air; the more you're exposed to it, the more it hurts you. And it isn't just because of the lack of opportunity. It's that living in these distressed areas changes your brain - and your kids' brains.

And that's what this cartoon is about: why it matters that black Americans have continued to be stuck in the poorest neighborhoods, even decades after the civil rights movement.

Let's go back 50 years: One in three black children grew up in extreme poverty during the civil rights movement

In the midst of the civil rights movement, between 1955 and 1970, about one in three black children grew up in very poor neighborhoods, where more than 30 percent of people were in poverty. Virtually no white children grew up in those very poor areas.

This is from a study by NYU sociologist Patrick Sharkey. Black families were in very difficult neighborhoods during the civil rights movement.

But then Sharkey looked at children who grew up between 1985 and 2000, presumably enough time for the policies from the civil rights movement to take effect.

What he found was astounding.

Among the younger generation, the same number of black children continued to grow up in the very poorest neighborhoods

Nothing had changed.

This study showed there is very little intergenerational mobility in black families. If you're black and your parents grew up in a poor neighborhood, then you probably ended up in a poor neighborhood too.

But is it really that bad to grow up in a poor neighborhood? Let's do an experiment.

In the 1990s, and the decades prior, there was a big argument among sociologists about whether growing up in a wealthy or poor neighborhood affected economic and health outcomes. It was unclear whether giving people the opportunity to live in better neighborhoods would actually help them - or if the same problems they had in their poor neighborhood would follow them.

So the federal government funded an experiment called Moving to Opportunity. They took 4,600 families living in very poor neighborhoods and randomly assigned them to one of three groups.

One group received vouchers that could only be used in wealthier neighborhoods, where fewer than 10 percent of households were in poverty.

Another received Section 8 vouchers with no restrictions, so they could live wherever.

The last stayed in public housing.

Initially, it looked like living in a wealthier neighborhood improved health outcomes, but it didn't seem to help adults and older youth earn more money.

But last year, Harvard researchers Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, and Lawrence Katz went back to look at how these people fared in the long term. And they found that the people who moved to the nicer neighborhoods were earning significantly more than those who stayed in public housing.

Other research shows growing up in poor neighborhood affects your brain

Researchers have begun to find evidence that growing up in distressing and traumatic environments can physiologically change the brain.

One way Sharkey, the NYU sociologist, looked at this phenomenon was by measuring how neighborhoods affected kids' IQ. He looked at where the kids grew up and where the kids' mothers grew up. Here's are the results:

On top of it all, if a murder occurred in a child's neighborhood - in an area of about six to 10 square blocks - their score fell by 7 to 8 points.

So a mother can mitigate effects of growing up in a poor neighborhood

But if the mother also grew up in poverty, then she was also exposed to distress and trauma - and children whose mothers grew up in poverty perform below average on the IQ test.

Not only that, but adverse childhood experiences - like abuse, family dysfunction, violence, and neglect - can have long-term health effects, both physical and mental.

Oh, another thing: Living in these poor neighborhoods makes you significantly less happy, less hopeful, and less healthy

In Connecticut, Mark Abraham of DataHaven surveyed 16,000 people last year in one of the most comprehensive state surveys ever. And one of the more personal questions he asked was: How happy were you yesterday?

There was an undeniable pattern. Living in a highly distressed neighborhoods - which are poor, unemployed, and undereducated - often meant you were quite unhappy.

Quite hopeless:

And less healthy:

And people who lived in distressed neighborhoods didn't think it was a good place to raise kids:

All of these things are correlated, according to Larry Finison of the Connecticut Health Foundation, who has studied neighborhoods indicators for decades.

If the neighborhood has a high crime rate and it's not safe for your kids to be outside by themselves, then you wouldn't let your kids play outside. This means they are getting less exercise, which leads to higher obesity rates. And more health problems. And so on.

In other words, living in these poor neighborhoods is really hard and unpleasant. And being poor means it's hard to leave.

So what happens when we let poor (mostly black) kids grow up in wealthier neighborhoods? One county tried it.

In Montgomery County, Maryland, there is a law that says if you're building a new subdivision of homes, about one in eight must be moderately priced. And for a third of the moderately priced homes, you have to give first dibs to the public housing authority so it can be turned into low-income housing.

So low-income families, who had an average income of $22,460 in 2007, apply to live in these homes. Rent costs about a quarter of the market value. And apartments are randomly assigned, which means they can end up in low-income neighborhoods or mixed-income neighborhoods.

Researcher Heather Schwartz thought this was a great opportunity to conduct an experiment: How much better do the kids in the mixed-income neighborhoods do, compared with the ones in low-income neighborhoods?

She looked at about 850 students with limited household resources, about 72 percent of whom were black. Because their housing was randomized, they went to school in a wide spectrum of environments. Schwartz analyzed what happened to them over a five- to seven-year span (from 2001 to 2007).

Going to school with wealthier kids helped a lot

What she found was astounding: The students who attended the schools with wealthier schoolmates (where fewer than 20 percent qualified for free or reduced meals) far outperformed those who went to school with poorer students.

The result is that by the end of elementary school, the poor students who attended the wealthier schools made a huge dent in the achievement gap between themselves and the wealthier students. Meanwhile, the achievement gap remained the same for students in poor schools.

In short, being in the wealthier schools helped students reach their full potential.

Moving to a better neighborhood also made kids more likely to earn more money as adults

That's the conclusion of a landmark study by Chetty and Hendren, the Harvard researchers.

Using tax filings, they analyzed the 5 million children who moved from one county to another between 1996 and 2012. Some moved to poorer places, and others moved to wealthier places.

What they found was that children who moved to a better environment ended up making more money when they grew up. Children who moved to a worse county ended up making less money.

One part of this is that places with higher housing costs generally had better outcomes, so only people with money could move to these areas. But the researchers isolated a neighborhood's effects by comparing people who were at the same level of income distribution. Below, we're comparing families at the 25th percentile:

The longer they were exposed to these places, the stronger the effect was

It furthered the idea that exposure to these poor environments was like breathing in polluted air: The longer you did it, the worse it was.

So should we start figuring out policies that urges poor black families to move to suburbs? Not necessarily.

That's what some advocates want, and this can be made possible with vouchers and where public housing is, and a handful of other strategies. This can be expensive but has shown to work with small samples.

But others believe this would create a void in the cities, and the people left behind would be disenfranchised even further - especially if this causes a greater concentration of poverty. So they believe there need to be policies that invest in communities.

When I brought this up with housing advocate Erin Boggs, who is in favor of giving people the choice to move elsewhere, she said she meets very few people who wouldn't move if given the opportunity.

Another idea is a universal basic income, which would pull everyone out of poverty. In short, the government would write a check to everyone, kind of like how Social Security writes a check to old people.

Another approach is to focus on poor mothers. Programs in Connecticut, and elsewhere, provide mental health services, basic needs, and job skills to mothers. The hope is to mitigate the effects of having a mother who grew up in a poor neighborhood.

Whatever we try, we're missing the point if we don't talk about race

We often talk about poverty as if it's only about the lack of money. But the most devastating part is that when a lot of people without money are pushed to live in the same neighborhood, it creates an environment that poisons a child's ability to reach their potential.

It's more comfortable to talk about inequality and poverty outside the context of race. More than half the country thinks past or present discrimination is not a major factor in why black Americans face problems today. But in the past, it was OK to literally build a wall between a white neighborhood and black neighborhood. That was a lot easier to point at and say: Hey, that's racist. Now, those concrete symbols of racism are largely gone and what's left are their systemic effects. Sometimes, that makes it hard to be as outraged.

But in this country, we forced people into toxic neighborhoods based on the color of their skin, and it still plays an overwhelming role in which people gets a real shot to be healthy, happy, and hopeful. In other words, the walls are still there.
Conversations with the following people, among others, helped shape this piece: Mark Abraham, Erin Boggs, Scott Gaul, Larry Finison, Steve Balcanoff, Elizabeth Krause, and Mariana Arcaya.

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Living in a poor neighborhood changes everything about your life

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In 1940, a white developer wanted to build a neighborhood in Detroit. So he asked the US Federal Housing Administration to back a loan. The FHA, which was created just six years earlier to help middle-class families buy homes, said no because the development was too close to an "inharmonious" racial group.

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Terry Heick

founder/director at teachthought. humanist. technologist. futurist. macro thinker extraordinaire.

Right near the core of education, just past tolerance and just short of affectionate connectivity, is the idea of empathy. University of California Berkley's Greater Good Science Center explains empathy:

The term "empathy" is used to describe a wide range of experiences. Emotion researchers generally define empathy as the ability to sense other people's emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.

What Empathy Is and Is Not

Empathy is often confused with sympathy, which is a pretty extraordinary error depending on how tightly wound you are about these things (and whose definitions you stand behind). Dr. Brené Brown offers a divisive take on the difference: "Empathy fuels connections, sympathy drives disconnection."

This contrasts with Dictionary.com, which explains:

Both empathy and sympathy are feelings concerning other people. Sympathy is literally "feeling with" -- compassion for or commiseration with another person. Empathy, by contrast, is literally "feeling into" -- the ability to project one's personality into another person and more fully understand that person.

Dictionary.com marks just a slight discrepancy between the two -- sympathy requires less movement and merging of emotions, while empathy is entirely that.

The chemistry, subjectivity, and nuance of language aside, there is a clear handle for us as teachers. However large you see the distinction, they certainly have very different tones. Empathy is based in compassion, while sympathy is based in analysis.

Greater Good continues, clarifying:

Contemporary researchers often differentiate between two types of empathy: "Affective empathy" refers to the sensations and feelings we get in response to others' emotions; this can include mirroring what that person is feeling, or just feeling stressed when we detect another's fear or anxiety. "Cognitive empathy," sometimes called "perspective taking," refers to our ability to identify and understand other peoples' emotions. Studies suggest that people with autism spectrum disorders have a hard time empathizing.

Ideally, empathy would be the net effect of experience, which in classrooms is a matter of both process and knowledge. Students would learn to empathize rather than be taught to empathize, as a symptom of what they know. Why this is important is a matter of implication and language. Teaching someone to feel what others feel and sit with emotions that aren't their own couldn't be any further from the inherent pattern of academics, which is always decidedly other. Teaching always begins with detachment -- learn this skill or content strand that is now apart from you. Empathy is the opposite -- it starts in the other, and finishes there without leaving.

Formal Education vs. True Connection

In your classroom, there are dozens of natural sources of empathy. But what about authenticity? There's nothing worse than "schoolifying" something that a child actually needs to know. So much of great teaching is about packaging content so that students recognize it as something they need to know and can actually use, rather than something to do "because I said so, and you don't want a zero, do you?"

Here's one way to consider it. Without empathy, you're teaching content instead of students. The concept of teachers as primarily responsible for content distribution is a dated one, but even seeking to "engage" students misses the calling of teaching. To teach a child is to miss that child. You must understand them for who they are and where they are, not for what you hope to prepare them for. "Giving knowledge" and "engaging students" in pursuit of pre-selected knowledge are both natural processes of formal education -- and both make empathy hard to come by.

So where to start doing something different? How should you "teach it"? How will you know it when you see it? Is it different for different content areas, grade levels, genders, socioeconomic backgrounds, nationalities, or some other "thing"? Is this new-age mumbo jumbo, or a precise tool for a progressive teacher? How has the push of digital and social media into learning spaces emphasized the need for empathy -- or naturally reduced it?

Is empathy a skill that can even be taught, a "competency" that you should bullet-point in your lesson plan, something that requires pre-assessment? Or is it something fuller, something more persistent and whole? Scotty McLennan, the Dean for Religious Life at Stanford University, suggests:

Expressing care for another is not an innate ability present more naturally in some people than others, but rather a skill that can be taught and nurtured through a supportive educational environment.

The Human Face of Understanding

But pushed farther, it's not hard to see that empathy is both a cause and effect of understanding, a kind of cognitive and emotional double helix that can create a bridge between classroom learning and "real-life" application. Getting started with empathy in the classroom is a matter of first grasping it as a concept, strategy, and residual effect of knowledge and perspective. Heading over to Teaching Tolerance and ordering a bunch of posters and DVDs may be unnecessary -- at least at first. Internalizing how the idea of empathy can reframe everything that happens in your classroom -- your reason for teaching -- is a shift that will suggest a world of possibility for teaching lessons, activities, and strategies.

More than anything else though, empathy is a tone. Broken into parts, it is about self, audience, and purpose. It helps students consider:

Who am I?

Who is "other"? And how? In what functions and degrees?

How do we relate? What do we share?

What do they need from me, and I from them?

This leads to a staggering and often troubling question for all of us: "What should I do with what I know?"

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Teaching Empathy: Are We Teaching Content or Students?

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Terry Heick founder/director at teachthought. humanist. technologist. futurist. macro thinker extraordinaire. Right near the core of education, just past tolerance and just short of affectionate connectivity, is the idea of empathy. University of California Berkley's Greater Good Science Center explains empathy: The term "empathy" is used to describe a wide range of experiences.

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Restorative Discipline Best Practice: ❖ Always do things WITH people, not TO them. ❖ Never use SCABS: Sarcasm, Criticism, Attacking, Blaming, Shaming ❖ Unconditional Positive Regard at all...

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The early results out of a Boston nonprofit are positive.

Alastair Grant / AP

And the science is clear-when brain capacity is used up on these worries and fears, there simply isn't as much bandwidth for other things.

Raising the most diverse generation of Americans ever
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Economic Mobility Pathways, or EMPath, has built its whole service-delivery model around this science, which it described in its 2014 report, " Using Brain Science to Design New Pathways Out of Poverty." The Boston nonprofit started out as Crittenton Women's Union, a merger of two of the city's oldest women-serving organizations, both of which focused on improving the economic self-sufficiency of families. It continues that work with a new name and a burgeoning focus on intergenerational mobility.

After years of coaching adults and watching those benefits trickle down to children, EMPath has brought children into the center of its model-offering a way out of intergenerational poverty with brain science.

Elisabeth Babcock, the president and CEO of EMPath, said people in poverty tend to get stuck in vicious cycles where stress leads to bad decision-making, compounding other problems and reinforcing the idea that they can't improve their own lives.

"What we're trying to do is create virtuous cycles where people take a step and they find out they can accomplish something that they might not have thought they could accomplish, and they feel better about themselves," Babcock said. Maybe that step helps them earn more money, solves a child-care problem that leads to better child behavior, or simply establishes a sense of control over their own lives. All of these things reduce stress, freeing up more mental bandwidth for further positive steps.

Intergen mentors visit participating families and facilitate conversations that prompt both adults and children to make future-oriented and contextualized decisions, ones that take into account other important domains. Their goal is to help the adults in the families become mentors for themselves and their children. Eventually, they hope, they make their own contributions obsolete.

Stephanie Brueck, the senior coordinator of the Intergenerational Mobility Project, recently sat down with a single mom, Ginnelle V., who asked her last name not be used to preserve her family's privacy, and Ginnelle's five children, four girls and one boy who range in age from kindergarten through college-aged.

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Over the last year, Brueck has helped the family think through both personal and family goal-setting. Ginnelle's youngest, 5-year-old Cyres, has a medical condition that likely will require an invasive surgery that can be delayed through certain exercises. The family's doctor gave them an overwhelming list of dozens of exercises, few of which Cyres can do on his own. Still, exercise became Cyres's personal goal for the Intergen Project.

Brueck created an easier-to-use fitness plan and helped Ginnelle think about working up to the doctor's original list-starting with five push-ups, for example, and helping Cyres eventually reach the recommended 25. Looking back, Ginnelle thinks it's strange she couldn't break down an overwhelming task into more approachable steps on her own.

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The early results out of a Boston nonprofit are positive. And the science is clear-when brain capacity is used up on these worries and fears, there simply isn't as much bandwidth for other things.