Teachers watch over students' mental health [newstribune.com]

This is good news! Praises to the Jefferson City school district for taking this action. What is only being said softly here is that most of the childhood adversities our students suffer are at the hands of their parents. At the high school level we need to be seeking ways to make parenting and child development education a priority. JCSD offers these types of courses at their high school but only as electives. Unfortunately, that is the way most high schools offer these classes if offered at all. Here are important factors to consider: more than 80% of our youth will become parents, parenting is the most challenging job any of us face, the original ACE study indicated 64% of us will experience at least one of the ten ACEs studied, 12.5% had an ACE score of four or more and due to the rise of our national opioid crisis we can anticipate these numbers worsening. Identifying children exhibiting warning signs in elementary school and building resilience in these students is a great first step. However, we still haven't provided them with a better parenting skill set. Step two should be making parenting education a priority. Let's begin by thinking about this. How many courses does a student take during their high school career that we can report, they will utilize the skills taught everyday of their adult life for more than two decades?