Category Archives: Education

Florida State launches professional certification in trauma and resilience

August 17, 2019 By in Child trauma, Education, Resilience, Trauma 2 Comments
(Getty Images)

Florida State University has launched a new online curriculum for a professional certification in trauma and resilience.

The curriculum was developed by the Clearinghouse on Trauma and Resilience within the Institute for Family Violence Studies at the FSU College of Social Work in conjunction with the FSU Center for Academic and Professional Development.

“This training addresses a gap in the knowledge base of human services professionals,” said Clearinghouse Director Karen Oehme. “Many professionals do not receive training on the impact of how to provide services to someone who is experiencing the harmful effects of trauma.”

The course enables professionals to develop the knowledge and skills they need to understand the impact of adult and childhood trauma, along with the keys to resilience. Participants will learn crucial information to improve service delivery to clients, students, human services recipients, patients and other members of the public.

The self-paced curriculum includes 20 hours of course content and 10 chapters of research-based readings, case scenarios, multimedia materials, assignments and quizzes.

The multidisciplinary course has been approved for continuing education credits for a diverse range of professionals including licensed counselors, social workers, nurses, dentists and lawyers. Participants outside of Florida can submit their certification to their own licensing board to determine credit awarded.

“The course is designed for professionals in a wide variety of fields because individuals in all different environments have exposure to trauma,” Oehme said. “We wanted to provide an economical, evidence-based resource to the public for those who want to enhance their professional knowledge, skills and career potential.”

The curriculum is based on developing an understanding of adverse childhood experiences and the associated long-term negative effects. The training offers a powerful new perspective on trauma-informed approaches to effective service delivery.

“Florida State University recognizes that professionals from all backgrounds have the ability to help individuals build resilience,” said Jim Clark, dean of the College of Social Work. “But first they have to learn about why resilience is so crucial in treating the negative impacts of trauma.” Clark said that FSU realized the need for such a course as it was developing the Student Resilience Proect.

“Our community partners have told us time and time again that they need research-informed resources,” Clark said. “It was a natural next step for the Clearinghouse on Trauma and Resilience to develop such a course.”

Faculty from across Florida State’s campus participated in the review of the new course.

Mimi Graham at the Center for Prevention & Early Intervention Policy, a leader in trauma-informed education, served as a reviewer, along with 10 other faculty members.

“FSU is a leader in trauma and resilience education for the public,” Graham said. “This course ensures that crucial information is available to our community leaders, so they can make trauma-informed decisions.”

Joedrecka Brown Speights at the College of Medicine said, “It’s important for human services professionals to keep up with the new research on brain development so they remember there is always hope for healing after trauma.”

Chapters in the certification cover the mental and physical effects of trauma, cultural considerations in trauma research, skills for addressing trauma and an interdisciplinary approach to building resilience.

Professionals are required to review all of the course material and pass the chapter quizzes and final exam. When professionals complete the training, they will receive their professional certification from the Center for Academic and Professional Development.

Discounts for the 20-hour course are offered for FSU alumni and veterans. For questions about fees and enrollment, contact the FSU Center for Academic & Professional Development at resilience@capd.fsu.edu or (850) 644-7545.

Medical students’ ACE scores mirror general population, study finds

July 21, 2019 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Education, Solutions 5 Comments

A national survey published in 2014 revealed a disturbing finding. Compared to college graduates pursuing other professions, medical students, residents and early career physicians experienced a higher degree of burnout.

Citing that article, a group of researchers at University of California at Davis School of Medicine wondered whether medical students’ childhood adversity and resilience played a role in their burnout, said Dr. Andres Sciolla, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California at Davis Medical School. Sciolla is the lead author of a recent study in the journal Academic Psychiatry that investigated those questions.

Their query was based on the landmark CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Studythat showed a remarkable link between 10 types of childhood trauma — such as witnessing a mother being hit, living with a family member who is addicted to alcohol or who is mentally ill, living with a parent who is emotionally abusive, experiencing divorce — and the adult onset of chronic disease, mental illness, being violent or a victim of violence, among many other consequences. The study found that two-thirds of the more than 17,000 participants had an ACE score of at least one, and 12 percent had an ACE score of four or more. (For more information, see ACEs Science 101.)

The ACE Study and subsequent research shows that people with an ACE score of 4 are twice as likely to be smokers and seven times more likely to be alcoholic than someone with an ACE score of 0. Having an ACE score of 4 increases the risk of emphysema or chronic bronchitis by nearly 400 percent, and attempted suicide by 1200 percent. An ACE score of 6 or higher is associated with a 20-year shorter lifespan than someone with an ACE score of 0. However, subsequent research has shown that social buffers, such as having just one caring adult in a child’s life, can mitigate the impact of ACEs.

For the UC Davis study, 86 third-year medical students completed an ACE survey. Of those, 49% had an ACE score of 0, 40 % had ACE scores between 1-3, and 12 % had ACE scores of 4 or more.

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Talking ACEs and building resilience in prison

March 6, 2019 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Education, Solutions, Trauma, Washington State 11 Comments

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They’re the forgotten, the 2.3 million people in US prisons. The overwhelming majority of them have experienced significant childhood trauma. Before you click out of here, this isn’t another boo-hoo story, as some of you might describe it, about the dismal state of our corrections system, for inmates and guards alike. (Oh, yes, it is profoundly dismal.) This is a story about how one tiny part of it isn’t so dismal, and actually addresses head-on the fact that most (91 percent) of the approximately 2.3 million prisoners will finish their sentences and go home. To your neighborhood. So….wouldn’t you want the prisons to help these guys and gals so that they, and by definition, we, come out happier and more well-adjusted than when they went in?

Well, yea-uh.

Ok. Just in case you glossed over it, let’s go back to that sentence about childhood trauma. It is precisely why the 2,300 inmates at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Wash., ended up there. Over the last 20 years some profound, intense research revealed that people who have a lot of childhood adversity have seven times the risk of becoming an alcoholic, 12 times the risk of attempted suicide, twice the risk of cancer and heart attacks. They’re more violent, more likely to be victims of violence, have more broken bones, more marriages, and use prescription drugs more often than people who have no childhood adversity. And those are just the few drops in the bucket of how childhood trauma affects people’s lives.

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Middle school tackles everybody’s trauma; result is calmer, happier kids, teachers and big drop in suspensions

June 11, 2018 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Education, Solutions Tags: 2 Comments

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John Jimno

During the 2014/2015 school year, things were looking grim at Park Middle School in Antioch, CA. At the time, staff couldn’t corral student disruptions. Teacher morale was plummeting. By the end of February 2015, 192 kids of the 997 students had been suspended — 19.2 percent of the student population.

“I was watching really good people burning out from the [teaching] profession and suspending kids over and over and nothing was changing behavior-wise, and teachers were not happy about it,” says John Jimno, who was in his second year as principal at that time.

So, Jimno and the staff took advantage of a program that Contra Costa County was integrating into its Youth Justice Initiative and, in doing so, joined a national trauma-informed school movement that has seen hundreds of schools across the country essentially replace a “What’s wrong with you?” approach to dealing with kids who are having troubles with asking kids, “What happened to you?”, and then providing them help.

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Early childhood educators learn new ways to spot trauma triggers, build resiliency in preschoolers

April 9, 2018 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Community prevention programs, Education, Resilience, Solutions, Trauma 9 Comments

Julie Kurtz, co-director, trauma-informed practices in early childhood education, WestEd Center for Child & Family Studies/photo by Laurie Udesky

A hug may be comforting to many children, but for a child who has experienced trauma, it may not feel safe.

That’s an example used by Julie Kurtz, co-director of trauma-informed practices in early childhood education at the WestEd Center for Child & Family Studies (CCFS), as she begins a trauma training session. Her audience, preschool teachers and staff of the San Francisco, CA-based Wu Yee Children’s Services at San Francisco’s Women’s Building, listen attentively.

Kurtz leads them into a description of how a child’s young brain functions, how young children – regardless of whether they have experienced trauma or not — live in their reptile brain.

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Zorgos: A superpower we can teach kids

September 15, 2017 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Community prevention programs, Education, Solutions 3 Comments
Zorgos: A superpower we can teach kids

This article contains two excerpts from the beginning and end of The Bullying Antidote: Superpower Your Kids for Life, by Dr. Louise Hart and Kristen Caven. The book explores how ACEs are created by stress, change, beliefs, and tradition, and provides a guide to positive parenting so that parents can prevent them in their children and communities.

 

The Bullying Antidote: Zorgos

Bullying is a power dynamic where one person exerts control over another physically, emotionally, or socially. Bullying can be persistent—a focused and repeated pattern—or it can be a single, traumatic event. In the bullying dynamic, one person always loses.

There is no pill, no quick fix for the enormous problem of bullying. But there are thousands of solutions…and we’d like you to have access to them all.

There is a superpower with which we’d like to endow your child, and all children. This power enables them to repel bullies and transform their relationships; it allows them to get what they need without resorting to bullying.

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Visionary Atlantan grows community model for trauma-informed housing that benefits schools

August 31, 2017 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Community prevention programs, Education, Solutions 9 Comments

Marjy Stagmeier

*Author’s note: This story was co-authored by Jennifer Hossler and Carey Sipp. 

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Real estate developer Marjy Stagmeier was sifting through tenant applications for an apartment complex she had purchased in Atlanta and noticed something disturbing: Many of the applicants were single mothers making $8/hour.

“I wondered how these women could afford to live on so little, with the cost of housing, childcare and the daily needs of life being so high. Seeing how little they made moved me to decide, then and there, not to ever raise the rent,” says Marjy. “I wanted to keep rent affordable.”

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Explaining the symptoms of PTSD or C-PTSD

July 30, 2017 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Education, Our stories, Trauma 22 Comments

Author’s Note: It took me over a month to write this because simply describing what it is like to struggle with the symptoms of C-PTSD resulted in triggering fear, anxiety, and flashbacks.  I persisted with this narrative because I want people who have never experienced the complexities of this illness to have a better understanding of what someone with PTSD or C-PTSD might be trying to manage.  If you personally struggle with anxiety, have PTSD or C-PTSD, or you are triggered by descriptions of fear or trauma, you should not read this.  It is hard to read. It was hard to write.

In the car today, a good friend (I rarely leave the house without someone with me) asked me if I had looked at the condominiums in town for potential rentals when I was in the middle of my housing search last year.  I had, and he asked what I had thought of them and why I had not opted to live there. I told him that the basement in one I looked at

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Educators’ “complex trauma” resolution: Will it have an impact?

October 31, 2016 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Education 4 Comments

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Robert Hull and Donna Christy

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When I met up with school psychologists Donna Christy and Robert Hull at the Starbucks in Greenbelt, MD, they sparred good-naturedly about each other’s extra-curricular activities outside the school building—he says she is a big honcho with the National Education Association (NEA), and she says he will speak to any audience, anywhere (as long as his expenses are covered) on the subject of trauma and education. Both work for the Prince George’s (P.G.) County School District in nearby Washington, DC.

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Which version is your kid’s school?

August 19, 2016 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Education, School discipline, Solutions 12 Comments

This fabulous video from Atlanta Speech School shows what a trauma-informed/resilience building school looks like — and what a school looks like that hasn’t incorporated these practices.

We’ve done stories about schools that have incorporated practices based on the science of adverse childhood experiences. This science includes who suffers and the consequences (the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study and other epidemiological studies), the effects of toxic stress that these experiences have on a child’s brain and body, how the consequences of these experiences can be passed from generation to generation, and the resilience research that shows our brains are plastic and our bodies want to heal.

Here’s a list:

Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA, tries a new approach to school discipline; suspensions drop 85% — This led to the making of the amazing documentary Paper Tigers, which followed six Lincoln High School students for a year.

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