Roundup: "Quiet Time" at school; $3.2M grant for child trauma in CT; child welfare workshops

In Visitacion Valley Middle School, an urban middle school in South San Francisco, CA, students start and end their days with 15 minutes of meditation, according to this wonderful post by Kyle Palmer on KQED's State of Health blog. Since the school started the program, fewer teachers have resigned, student attendance rate is at 98 percent, suspensions are down and grades are up. The program was put together by the David Lynch Foundation and the San Francisco-based Center for Wellness and Achievement in Education (CWAE), which trained teachers and counseled students on meditation techniques.

The Connecticut Department of Children and Families has been given a $3.2 million grant "to improve the way the agency, community-based clinics and social workers statewide handle children affected by trauma in all its forms," according to a report on DarienPatch.com. A more thorough report appeared earlier this month on Courant.com, which noted that it's a five-year program, and Connecticut was one of five states that received the monies.