Sept 10, 2018, Portage (WI) Daily Register: Music, mindfulness among changes set by new principal in Portage https://www.wiscnews.com/portagedailyregister/news/local/education/music-mindfulness-among-changes-set-by-new-principal-in-portage/article_8108fb4c-dd64-516d-b275-effcadac92f3.html Music played at John Muir Elementary School when Principal Jen Garrigan greeted students in the hallways Monday morning…. This school year Garrigan’s students will hear live music every Monday, one of several new features at John Muir. “It gives them a nice and calming start to their week,” she said of the practice. Garrigan – who last week started her first year as the school’s principal – is also bringing retired educators into the school building every Tuesday to work with fifth-graders on vocabulary and reading. She’s starting Academic Students of the Week, too, and expanding the Mindfulness Spaces and Calming Corners that she started as the school’s dean of students last year. … “We look at every student individually and we celebrate their differences,” she said of the approach at John Muir. Mindfulness plays a big role in what leaders emphasize at John Muir, said Criss Shaben, the new dean of students. She recently took charge of the Sensory Room that Garrigan started last year, turning it into an “enchanted forest.”… “I have a lead on a loom,” Shaben said of her idea to eventually allow students who visit the sensory room to weave their thoughts and ideas into one big creative display. Shaben said she sees the positive results of the sensory room frequently. It’s more than a tool to combat anxiety, Shaben said, “It gives them a chance to be a kid again.”…
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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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