Overcoming Poverty's Damage to Learning

In Georgia’s Bibb county, students at two schools are learning deep breathing and mindfulness from the organization, On the Same Breath. The practice, introduced by the organization and then led by teachers, gives students the opportunity to complete this practice every day for 40 days in the hopes that it will address behavioral issues and stress. It’s currently in the pilot stage for Bibb county, but the Atlantic public school system has been using it for years.

Since Ascend Charter Schools switched from the popular "No Excuses" model to a Responsive Classroom philosophy, test scores have steadily risen, suspension rates have dropped dramatically, and the racial achievement gap has all but disappeared. While traces of the former structures, such as repeated routines, still exist today, the school has also incorporated trauma-informed elements and social-emotional learning curricula.

In Baltimore, the effects of poverty hamper student's educational experience. This article looks at one school's attempt to address these education and behavioral barriers through meditation.

Black communities are often left without adequate counseling services when faced with racial trauma, but clinical psychologists are working to address this. So far, solutions include opening clinics that specialize in African-American mental health and social media campaigns focused on normalizing conversations around mental health awareness in the Black community.

Trauma training for police and community workers teaches them how to make tough situations, such as the arrest of a parent, easier on young children. Painful memories can alter perceptions of police for a lifetime.

Police can work better with young people if they understand more about how their brains work. Young people can deal better with police if they understand more about their jobs, and the law. New training and techniques aim to improve those relationships. Some are already being used in Cleveland, and others are on the way.

The Healing Hurt People program, or HHP, is an ER-based violence intervention program that works on the public health-based notion that violence - like other diseases that spread - can be prevented. It targets services to those at highest risk, patients like those in Philadelphia, who are being treated for violent injuries in the city's emergency rooms. Unlike other programs, it recognizes and attempts to heal the underlying emotional trauma that results from, and often predates, violent injury.

Child First is a program in Connecticut, where staff members deliver home-based parent guidance and child-parent psychotherapy to help prevent the detrimental physical and mental effects of toxic stress on children. The engagement is guided by an evidence-based methodology called Child-Parent Psychotherapy, which is grounded in collaborative problem solving.

As the education community increasingly raises up social-emotional curricula as a solution to rising anxiety levels in young children, it can be hard for schools to know which of the countless programs and curricula are actually effective. One district in Virginia might have found a promising model — Bristol's schools have made several simple changes to give students the space to talk openly about their emotions and are seeing clear academic improvements.

People who experience trauma in their early childhood are at a higher likelihood of experiencing chronic pain in later years, which often goes untreated. However, emotional awareness and expression therapy, which combines talk therapy with cognitive behavioral therapy, has shown significant success in treating those suffering from this health issue.