All Washington's children and youth grow up safe and healthy--thriving physically, emotionally, and educationally, nurtured by family and community. In this first five-year strategic planning cycle, the Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) will focus on six Strategic Priorities--one relates to equity, three relate to…

Z402 Youth Theatre Tour was designed from a critical performative pedagogical positioning (Weltsek, 2019). Here learning emerges from how individuals and communities perform their emergent identities as they cross literal and metaphorical socio-cultural borders. Z402 resulted in a 100% student created new play, parallel workshop, and study guide.…

The purpose of this convergent mixed methods research study was to determine if teacher instructional practices implemented after receiving job-embedded professional development through instructional coaching impact student reading achievement scores in an urban elementary school setting in which the school district faces the impact of poverty. In…

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) are traumas experienced from birth to an individuals' eighteenth birthday. These traumas may involve various physical and psychological stressors that cause elevated levels of toxic stress throughout the body. These traumas tend to impact children and their progress in learning and possibly interfere with…

College students experience high levels of life stress that put them at increased risk for nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI). It is important to understand which vulnerabilities put students most at risk, in order to inform treatment in college counseling centers. This study investigated the joint contributions of specific vulnerabilities to lifetime…

The impact of trauma among young children is gaining attention. About one in four children experience potentially traumatic events before their third birthday. The rate of trauma among children with disabilities is unclear; however, evidence suggests that the rate of abuse and neglect is higher for individuals with disabilities than for those…

Researcher--community partnerships are a necessary but not sufficient facet of effective research and evaluation with community-based projects and in clinical settings. This article describes two approaches that we have integrated into a multiyear, multiphase research and evaluation initiative supporting the health and well-being of vulnerable…

Forced migration generally refers to groups of people who are displaced by conflicts related to natural or environmental disasters, or war. This conceptual article takes up the topic of teaching children who have experienced forced migration due to war from ethnic or religious conflict, and the stories of trauma they may bring into a classroom.…

Reflective practice in TESOL is widely used in pre-service and in-service teacher education contexts and is regarded as beneficial for ongoing professional learning. While models of reflective language teaching vary, they all aim to improve classroom outcomes for teachers and students. A holistic approach to reflective practice includes teachers'…

Exposure to chronic trauma such as lifestyles of poverty, events of natural disaster, and acts of violence on individuals or groups continues to happen for educators and their students -- if not via personal experience, via media-informed awareness. Critical conscience as increased awareness, understanding, and desire for advocacy is increased…

This reflection on practice provides a foundation for understanding the impact of Hurricane Harvey on teachers and children across the Texas Gulf Coast. It also documents the emergence of a professional development initiative born when early childhood teacher educators in the community outreach arm of a major university sought to provide immediate…

Posttraumatic growth theory posits that when life circumstances are perceived as stressful, secondary appraisal processes can be recruited in ways to facilitate both coping efforts and personal growth. Using a mixed-methods approach, we found mothers' most challenging experiences involved child behavior (e.g. aggression, communication, and social…

Adverse childhood experiences (typically referred to as ACEs) are potentially traumatic experiences and events, ranging from abuse and neglect to parental incarceration. A growing body of research has made it increasingly apparent that ACEs are a critical public health issue that can have negative, lasting effects on health and well-being in…

This article uses auto ethnography as research as the author examines her own childhood abuse and how it has shaped her as an educator who has taught at the middle level, high school, and university. Through her experiences, she has determined that teachers' personal stories significantly affect their development as educators. Through their…

Between half and two-thirds of all school-aged children experience trauma, and 26% of children will witness or experience trauma before the age of four. Early indicators of trauma's impact on children is observable in the likelihood that they are 2 1/2 times more likely to fail a grade than their unaffected peers; they score lower on standardized…