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These are some of the things we’ve been reading about:
Having one black teacher can improve black students’ chances of going to college.
Should childhood trauma be treated as a public health crisis?
In New York, a focus on house could lead to more diverse schools.
To read more, click on the following links. Continue reading
Bullying threatens students’ physical and emotional safety and can negatively impact their ability to learn.
Sadly, too many children in America are being bullied each year. According to stopbullying.gov, a federal government website managed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, between 25 percent and 33 percent students have been bullied at school and most bullying happens in middle school.
In a recent survey published by the National Association of Elementary School Principals, school leaders say that they worry about the well-being of their students and that emotional bullying is one of their top 10 concerns.
Fortunately, school staff can make schools safer by working to prevent bullying and by sending the message that bullying is unacceptable. Continue reading
Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!
These are some of the things we’ve been reading about:
Teachers are grappling with how the opioid crisis impacts students.
The U.S. Department of Education has published a new report on rural education.
Nearly 30 percent of teachers are chronically absent.
To read more, click on the following links. Continue reading
Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!
These are some of the things we’ve been reading about:
Racism can affect young children’s mental health.
Lack of Internet access makes it tough for some teenagers to do homework.
New York City hires 100 coordinators to work with the city’s growing population of homeless students.
To read more, click on the following links. Continue reading
City Connects coordinators encourage students to get involved in their communities because this expands students’ world view, helps them develop empathy and leadership skills, and shows them how their actions can have a positive impact.
Last month, the winner for loudest community activity was the 2018 Great Lakes Great Apple Crunch.
Across the Midwest, at predetermined times, students gathered together and bit into apples to make a synchronous and satisfying crunch. The goal? Educate and encourage the use of healthy, locally-grown foods, support local farmers, grow healthy eaters, and build strong communities across the region.
The event is part of National Farm to School month, an effort to forge stronger connections between farms and schools.
While City Connects coordinators often help students with tougher problems, there’s an emphasis on connecting students to engaging activities that help them learn while having fun.
“Some of our kindergarteners had recently taken a field trip to an apple orchard,” Cassie Norris, the Coordinator at the Harvest Preparatory School in Minneapolis, says. At her school students in kindergarten through eighth grade participated in the Great Apple Crunch along with some teachers and administrators. The school “had different crunch times throughout the day.”
Meanwhile in Springfield Ohio, Catholic Central Elementary School celebrated the day with apples from the Steven Bakery and Orchard, according to the school’s coordinator, Josh Richardt. Some 350 K-8 students participated along with 20 staff members. The school also worked with the Ohio State Extensions Office, which organized healthy eating education programs for students.
“Overall it was a really positive event! It was neat thinking that we were doing this at the same time as one million-plus others,” Richardt says.
As we’ve blogged before, enrichment is vital to students’ success. Music lessons, art classes, and other experiences “can help students gain confidence, develop new skills, strengthen positive relationships, build resiliency, and see themselves in a new way.”
An event like the Great Apple Crunch can help students take more pride in themselves and in their communities, educate them about nutrition and healthy food, all of that while having fun.
Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!
These are some of the things we’ve been reading about:
Education Week explores how principals manage job pressure.
Federal legislation funds grants to help schools with the opioid crisis.
Boston College’s Center for Optimized Student Support is building a statewide infrastructure of integrated student support.
Students who attend more “advantaged” schools do better on international exams.
To read more, click on the following links. Continue reading
At City Connects, we believe that to be able to effectively help children succeed in school and in life, we need to take a customized, comprehensive, coordinated, and continuous approach to student support. And one of the most critical ways to do this is to carefully collect data — because data leads to action.
“Our collection of data is one of the most powerful tools we have,” Mary Walsh, the Executive Director of City Connects, explains. “It’s a record of what we’ve done. It enables us to tailor services and identify trends. It’s a source of insights about what we could be doing. And, it turns out, it’s proof that our model of helping students works.”
Coordinators collect data from whole class reviews. They collect data from individual student plans, from service referrals, and from both school-based and community providers.
All of this information is entered into our highly secure Student Support Information System, a proprietary database. Continue reading
Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!
These are some of the things we’ve been reading about:
A Cape Cod school district is using social emotional learning assessments.
A federal spending bill boosts funding for early childhood education.
California fights preschool expulsions with mental health services.
To read more, click on the following links. Continue reading
