Nov 19, 2018, Falmouth (ME) Forecaster: Superintendent's Notebook: Students need more than academics http://www.theforecaster.net/superintendents-notebook-students-need-more-than-academics/ … At the Portland Public Schools, we know students need more than academics to prepare them for college and career. We believe that academics, work habits, and social-emotional skills are equally important in school and in life. In fact, that belief is the third of our district’s seven Core Beliefs about Learning. This is the third in our series of columns about our Learning Beliefs that I’m writing with Melea Nalli, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning. This month, we’ll discuss how social-emotional learning and positive habits of work and learning are essential components of a well-rounded education, along with academics. … SEL also is vitally important for success. Research shows that multiple adverse childhood experiences in students’ lives can impact the brain and learning. Students across all income and racial backgrounds can be impacted. That is why the Portland Public Schools, Maine’s largest and most diverse school district, believes that SEL skills are important for all our students. We are striving to build a full continuum of behavioral health supports that range from proactive development of SEL skills, such as responsible decision-making, to more responsive mental health supports for students with more significant needs. Our schools are setting up structures and routines to facilitate this work, and we’re providing our teachers with SEL professional development to help them weave SEL into their instruction. Here are some examples of what we are doing to support SEL and HOWLs development:… Providing trauma-sensitive supports and structures for students who have greater needs: For example, in some schools we use mindfulness practices or “calm spaces” to help students manage their emotions. …
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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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