Category Archives: Lincoln

Paper Tigers celebrates Education Week with 100 screenings across the U.S.

November 18, 2015 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Education, Lincoln, Solutions 6 Comments
(l to r) Kelsey, Pam Cantor, David Bornstein _______________

(l to r) Kelsey, Pam Cantor, David Bornstein _________________________

In a kickoff event for Education Week, several hundred people crowded into the fabulous Tishman Auditorium at the New School in New York City on Monday night to watch Paper Tigers, a documentary that follows six students during a school year at Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA, the first trauma-informed high school in the U.S.

Nearly 100 schools, colleges, universities and communities across the country are screening Paper Tigers this week.

Immediately following the New York screening, Paper Tigers director James Redford was joined in a live streamed panel discussion by Turnaround for Children founder Dr. Pamela Cantor, New York Times columnist and Solutions Journalism Network co-founder David Bornstein, and Dr. Howard Steele, professor of psychology at the New School.

A special guest joined them — Kelsey, one of the students featured in the film. She was a sophomore when the film was made. She’s now a senior, is attending community college and working part-time. She had a 4.0 grade average in her junior year.

The reason she stayed at Lincoln High School, she said, is because “I don’t feel judged there. I feel like I can be myself there. That’s still the biggest part about Lincoln. There’s such a level of acceptance, such a family atmosphere. You have people you can talk to all the time.”

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Washington, DC, City Council Education Committee probes how trauma-informed schools can help students

July 21, 2015 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Education, Lincoln, School discipline, Solutions, Trauma 3 Comments
David Grosso, DC City Council Education Committee Chair

District of Columbia Councilmember David Grosso _____________________

Two-and-a-half years ago, a school administrator confronted District of Columbia Councilmember David Grosso with a stark and surprising reality when he visited the Walker-Jones Education Campus to learn about a literacy intervention program. At the end of the visit, the school official delayed Grosso’s departure to make one additional point: Something must be done to address the fact that over 40% of all DC students have experienced trauma—a “jaw-dropping” number, according to Grosso.

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Can School Heal Children in Pain? Yes, it Can!

June 28, 2015 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Education, Lincoln, School discipline, Solutions 3 Comments

ApaperJames Redford, director of Paper Tigers, a documentary about the journey of students and teachers at a trauma-sensitive alternative high school in Walla Walla, Washington, posed a provocative question in a recent blog: can school heal children in pain?

I believe that it can.

While trauma-sensitive schools can’t erase every source of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), considering how many hours of their lives children spend in school, educators can do much to mitigate the effects of traumatic stress, and help students to build skills for resilience and well-being. At the very least, schools can refrain from further traumatizing children.

Children with disabilities and behavioral problems, in particular children of color, are regularly subjected to practices such as seclusion and restraint in school. The data conclusively prove that “zero tolerance policies” driving the school to prison pipeline disproportionately affect students of color

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Can School Heal Children in Pain?

June 3, 2015 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Community prevention programs, Education, Lincoln, Resilience, School discipline, Washington State 6 Comments

Aredford

After learning about the overwhelming effects of childhood trauma, I decided to make a film about a school that’s adopted a “trauma-informed” lens.

Documentaries are no walk in the park. They take a lot of time and money; they have a way of making a mockery out of your narrative plans. They must share the attention of an audience that is increasingly losing more and more of it.

Why bother? It’s a good question. For me, I have one simple bar that all my films must clear: an “oh my God!” moment. If a story does not elicit that reaction from deep within my bones, I don’t do it. I count on that sense of awe, concern, wonder, and alarm to carry me through the long haul of making the film. To do otherwise, well — it just seems stupid.

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Resilience practices overcome students’ ACEs in trauma-informed high school, say the data

May 31, 2015 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Community prevention programs, Education, Lincoln, Resilience, School discipline, Solutions, Washington State 33 Comments
The cast and crew of Paper Tigers take a bow after the sold-out premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival.

The cast and crew of Paper Tigers take a bow after a sold-out screening at the Seattle International Film Festival.

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Three years ago, the story about how Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA, tried a new approach to school discipline and saw suspensions drop 85% struck a nerve. It went viral – twice — with more than 700,000 page views. Paper Tigers, a documentary that filmmaker James Redford did about the school — premiered last Thursday night to a sold-out crowd at the Seattle International Film Festival. Hundreds of communities around the country are clamoring for screenings.

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Paper Tigers to premiere at Seattle International Film Festival

May 7, 2015 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Education, Lincoln, School discipline, Solutions, Washington State 5 Comments

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Paper Tigers will  premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) at 7 PM Thursday, May 28, 2015, at the SIFF Cinema Uptown in Seattle, WA. SIFF is the largest and most highly attended festival in the U.S.

Paper Tigers follows a year in the life of an alternative high school in Walla Walla, WA, that has radically changed its approach to disciplining its students, and in the process has become a promising model for how to break the cycles of poverty, violence and disease that affect families. A story about the school was published on this site in 2012: Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA, tries new approach to school discipline; suspensions drop 85%

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An additional screening will take place at 12:30 PM on Saturday, May 30 at the same location. For ticket information and other details: http://www.siff.net/festival-2015/paper-tigers

The documentary was directed by James Redford. Its executive producer is Karen Pritzker. To view a trailer of the movie, go to PaperTigersMovie.com.

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Paper Tigers trailer…a peek into documentary about Lincoln High School

December 2, 2014 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Education, Lincoln, Solutions, Washington State 16 Comments

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Documentary filmmaker James Redford released the trailer for Paper Tigers, a documentary that follows four teens who attend Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA. Lincoln was the first high school in the country to integrate trauma-informed and resilience-building practices, which resulted in an 85 percent decline in suspensions and a 40% decline in expulsions after the first year. After four years, suspensions had dropped 90 percent, expulsions dropped to zero, and graduation rates increased five-fold.

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The growing interest in ACEs and trauma-informed practices

June 21, 2013 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Chronic disease, Community prevention programs, Education, Lincoln, School discipline, Solutions, Trauma 3 Comments

ACEStates2013

So much is happening in events, reports, research and news about adverse childhood experiences and trauma informed practices that it’s hard to keep up. But here are a few notable results:

  • According to Dr. Robert Anda, one of the co-founders of the CDC’s ACE Study, 21 states have done or are completing their own ACE surveys.
  • At last month’s National ACEs Summit in Philadelphia, PA, two unifying themes emerged: to be successful in preventing childhood trauma and to stop further traumatizing children and adults who are already traumatized, people have to work across professional silos and systems, and the changes have to occur at the community level. In other words — this ain’t a top-down endeavor. Martha Davis, executive director of the Institute for Safe Families, which hosted the summit, wrote up six interesting short overviews of the presentations. She and Kristin Schubert of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which sponsored the summit, wrote an op-ed that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer this week.
  • At that same meeting, ISFS released an ACE survey of Philadelphia — the first of a major U.S. city. The results were grim:  37.3% of adults experienced 4 or more ACEs — three times higher than the 12.5% in the CDC’s ACE Study. That works out to 432,100 people. This substantially increases their risk of long-term health effects. But, as to the city’s resilience factors, the results were also hopeful: 85% felt the “neighborhoods in which they grew up in were safe”, 77.5% thought their “neighbors looked out, supported, and trusted each other”, and 92.3% said that “someone made them feel special while growing up”.
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The painful side of compassion emerges when we can’t help a student

August 1, 2012 By in Child abuse, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Lincoln, Our stories, Washington State 1 Comment

[Editor’s note: In April, I posted a story about how Lincoln High School reduced its suspensions 85% by using a new method of school discipline. So many people were intrigued by how Lincoln High works that we thought you might be interested in these essays by Lincoln’s staff and students.]  

By Jim Sporleder
Principal, Lincoln High School

When you’re working with students that have high ACE scores, not every story is successful. You’re going to experience pain, just as you’re going to experience joy.

Stacy (not her real name) came to Lincoln High when she was a freshman. Because of a learning disability and her mental health, she was identified as a special education student. Somehow she missed acquiring that designation when she was in elementary and middle school. It’s unfortunate, because she had very special needs.

Stacy is a cutter. When she is upset, she cuts her wrists and arms. She’s been doing this for a long time: both arms have dozens of scars. Her parents swing between horrific verbal abuse and emotional neglect. They ignore her cutting or criticize her for trying to get attention.

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Don’t forget calm, quiet students — they may be hurting as much as those who rage

July 11, 2012 By in Child abuse, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Lincoln, Solutions 2 Comments

[Editor’s note: In April, I posted a story about how Lincoln High School reduced its suspensions 85% by using a new method of school discipline. So many people were intrigued by how Lincoln High works that we thought you might be interested in a series of essays by Lincoln’s staff and students. This is the third in that series.]  

Dakota Johnson (l) with Lincoln High teacher Natalie Allen.

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By Natalie Allen
Teacher, Lincoln High School

Dakota Johnson started at Lincoln in March 2011 as a junior. He walked in displaying a very calm demeanor: He was polite, soft spoken — an extremely

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