Learn about the opioid overdose epidemic and how you can respond in your community. The Center for Opioid Safety Education Program at the University of Washington Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute provides information on overdose education, naloxone, and getting help at stopoverdose.org.
A section for professionals including drug court, first responders, health care providers, pharmacists, and treatment providers has clinical guidelines and resources for prevention and education.
Watch the informative training videos here for a great overview of overdose prevention and interventions at Training videos.
Communities That Care (CTC) employs a proven, community-change process for reducing youth violence, alcohol & tobacco use, and delinquency – through tested & effective programs and policies…
CTC uses prevention science to promote healthy youth development. We guide local coalitions through a tested 5-phase process.CTC fosters young people’s well-being using a Social Development Strategy that promotes opportunities, skills, and recognition.
Kids spend more time at school than anywhere outside their homes, making schools where we have the greatest chance of improving kids’ health trajectory through physical, social and emotional development.
Read the article from the Robert Wood Johnson Culture of Health blog:
Heroin and Prescription Opiate Taskforce Community Meeting:
A free community conversation on heroin and prescription opiate overdose and addiction on May 31st in Renton, sponsored by the King County Heroin & Prescription Opiate Addiction Task Force (formerly MHCADSD). This is a public event and your voice is needed!
The National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention Responds to New CDC Report
Increase in Suicide in the United States, 1999-2014 According to a joint statement prepared by partners of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, data in the new CDC report underscores why suicide prevention must remain a national public health priority. Read the statement for more from the Action Alliance
Authors Discuss “Chronic Student Absenteeism” Article in Podcast NASN School Nurse Editor, Cynthia Galemore, interviews authors Kathleen Jacobsen and Linda Meeder about the article “Chronic Student Absenteeism: The Critical Role of School Nurses.” Listen to the May NASN School Nurse podcast and read the article
TheWashington Kindergarten Inventory of Developing Skills (WaKIDS)is a transition process that helps to ensure a successful start to the K-12 experience and connect the key adults in a child’s life.
Three Components of WaKIDS
Family connectionwelcomes families into the Washington K-12 system as partners in their child’s education.
Whole-child assessmenthelps kindergarten teachers learn about the skills and strengths of the children in their classrooms so they can meet the needs of each child.
Early learning collaborationaligns practices of early learning professionals and kindergarten teachers to support smooth transitions for children.
Whole-Child Assessment
WaKIDS isn’t a “test.” Kindergarten teachers observe children during everyday classroom activities. This helps teachers find out what each child knows and can do at the beginning of the school year. Knowing more about children’s entering skills and strengths helps teachers and parents work together to support student growth in the kindergarten year.
Before October 31, teachers take an inventory of each child’s developing skills in six areas:
Parents who wish to excuse their children from participating in this inventory should notify their building principal in writing during the first week of school, or as soon as possible thereafter.
The state is phasing in WaKIDS in all state-funded, full-day kindergarten classrooms. Public schools that have not yet received state funding for full-day kindergarten may volunteer to participate, as well.
Resources
What is WaKIDS? (PDF)English|Spanish– a one-page document that provides an overview of this program.
Family Brochure(PDF) is an invitation for families of students who are participating in WaKIDS this year to get involved in the program and find out what to expect.
The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) just released a technical report on reducing distruptive behaviors.
Legislation required OSPI to work with a panel of experts to identify and develop a menu of best practices and strategies for reducing disruptive behavior.
The table below shows a quick summary of the practices that are proven to be effective in strengthening student educational outcomes, as determined by the expert panel.
Not all behavior intervention strategies work all of the time with all students. The expert panel, in their deliberations, strongly voiced the importance of ensuring that each of the intervention strategies and best practices described in the menu be designed to meet the diverse needs of students and be implemented with fidelity.
Educators must engage in a process of observation, analysis, action, and reflection in their classrooms regardless of the interventions chosen. This approach helps solve problems as they arise, and can ensure that the interventions chosen by the teacher or district have a greater chance of succeeding.
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 on May 28, 2015 to a sold-out crowd at the Seattle International Film Festival. Hundreds of communities around the country are clamoring for screenings.
Paper Tigers captures the pain, the danger, the beauty, and the hopes of struggling teens—and the teachers armed with new science and fresh approaches that are changing their lives for the better.
After four years of implementing the new approach, Lincoln’s results were even more astounding: suspensions dropped 90%, there were no expulsions, and kids’ grades, test scores and graduation rates surged.
But many educators aren’t convinced. They ask: Can the teachers and staff at Lincoln explain what they did differently? Did it really help the kids who had the most problems – the most adverse experiences? Or is what happened at Lincoln High just a fluke? Can it be replicated in other schools?
Last year, Dr. Dario Longhi, a sociology researcher with long experience in measuring the effects of resilience-building practices in communities, set about answering those questions.
The results? Yes. Yes. No. And yes.
In case you don’t know Lincoln High School’s story, here’s a quick summary: In 2010, Jim Sporleder, then-principal of Lincoln High School, learned about the CDC-Kaiser Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study and the neurobiology of toxic stress at a workshop in Spokane, WA. The ACE Study showed a link between 10 types of childhood trauma and the adult onset of chronic disease, mental illness, violence and being a victim of violence. The Children’s Resilience Initiative (CRI) organized a group of 30 people from Walla Walla, including Sporleder, to attend the workshop in Spokane. CRI is a community organization in Walla Walla that creates awareness about childhood adversity and encourages all sectors of the community – business, faith-based, corrections, law enforcement, education, etc. — to integrate trauma-informed and resilience-building practices.
Here’s what Sporleder learned:
Severe and chronic trauma (such as living with an alcoholic parent, or watching in terror as your mom gets beat up) causes toxic stress in kids. Toxic stress damages kid’s brains. When trauma launches kids into flight, fight or fright mode, they cannot learn. It is physiologically impossible.
They can also act out (fight) or withdraw (flight or fright) in school; they often have trouble trusting adults or getting along with their peers. They start coping with anxiety, depression, anger and frustration by drinking or doing other drugs, having dangerous sex, over-eating, engaging in violence or thrill sports, and even over-achieving.
Sporleder said he realized that he’d been doing “everything wrong” in disciplining kids, and decided to turn Lincoln High into a trauma-informed school.
Learn more about the results of Sporleder’s efforts here.
