Oct 1, 2018, Education Week: Control, Predictability Can Help Counter Students' Trauma, Research Finds http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2018/10/watamura_IMBES_Supporting_students_adverse_childhood_experiences.html Interventions that help students think flexibly and feel more control over their learning may help counter the effects of disadvantage and trauma, suggests emerging research at the International Mind-Brain Education conference here. More than 1 in 3 U.S. children have experienced at least one major trauma—from abuse or neglect to the loss of a family member to death, prison, or drugs—by the time they enter kindergarten. By the end of their school years, nearly half have had at least one adverse experience. Children who have experienced such trauma are more likely to struggle academically, disengage from school, or show behavioral problems. Sarah Enos Watamura, an associate professor at the University of Denver who studies the effects of stress on learning, argues that schools can better support these children by understanding how problematic behaviors evolve, and how to help children protect themselves in healthier ways than they do now…. For example, neuroscience studies have shown students who have been abused or exposed to violence in their family or neighborhood are more likely to view neutral situations as threatening. In school, this might mean the student is more likely to get into fights or to melt down in response to relatively mild criticism, but in a dangerous or abusive environment, reacting strongly to a potential threat may help children stay safe. Watamura argued that interventions that try to change students' behavior without changing or taking into account their environment are less likely to show long-term results. …
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Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
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