Evidence-based Practices for Addressing Chronic Stress in High-Crime Communities
The Trauma Responsive Educational Practices (TREP) Project was launched in 2016 by leading educators at The University of Chicago with a policy brief on the educational consequences of the chronic toxic stress of living in high-crime communities. The TREP Project works to develop the individual and organizational capacity of educators and schools serving children growing up in neighborhoods that have high levels of toxic stress, such as violent crime, concentrated poverty, concentrated foster care involvement, and housing instability. Educators can join the project’s virtual learning community to become a partner educator and receive policy and practice briefs that will increase their understanding of how traumatic experiences undermine students’ neurobiological development in ways that affect classroom functioning, as well as their ability to proactively intervene using evidence-based trauma responsive educational practices.
I
have been working 24/7 since this pandemic began in my role as superintendent,
just like all of my educator friends across the state and country have as well.
I have searched every resource, looked at every model, and tried to emulate the
best of the best. But I forgot one major resource: my students.
The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence has developed a social–emotional learning program called RULER, which teaches students to do daily check-ins, identifying the energy level and pleasantness of their emotions on a color-coded “mood meter.”
To help young people combat the growing mental health crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, Yale University is offering a variation of its most popular “happiness” course to more than 500 low-income high school students around the nation at no cost.