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Teaching Kids About Genocide [TheAtlantic.com]

Public schoolchildren in Michigan are now required to learn about the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide as part of their social studies curriculum, according to a law Governor Rick Snyder signed on Tuesday. While most students in Michigan no doubt learn about the Holocaust already, the new law would require teachers in public schools to spend a certain amount of time on these topics. Between eighth and 12th grades, schools must spend a combined six hours on genocide education, specifically...

The Importance of Queer Muslim Spaces [CityLab.com]

Qais Munhazim woke up early on Sunday at his home in Minneapolis for Suhoor—the prayer and pre-dawn meal that sustains fasting Muslims until sundown during the holy month of Ramadan. Before heading back to bed, the 31-year-old Ph.D student checked his phone, and read that while he had been asleep, the worst shooting in U.S. history had occurred. As he read the details of how a U.S. citizen of Afghan descent named Omar Mateen opened fire at a gay club in Orlando, ultimately killing 49 and...

No Driver's License, No Job [TheAtlantic.com]

Ask conservatives what the poor need to do to get out of poverty, and the answer usually involves something like, “Get a job.” That was the crux of the anti-poverty plan Paul Ryan revealed last week to shrugs, and has been the gist of many anti-poverty efforts over the past two decades. But for many people, there is one very specific—and often overlooked—reason why that’s not so easy: They don't have a driver's license. Not all jobs require a driver’s license, particularly those that pay...

A "When the Nickel Dropped" Story - Sometimes It's Something So Small

This essay was written by Mary Sharrow, a Peace4Tarpon board member. My daughter, Candace, taught 5th then 3rd grade at an inner city Baltimore elementary school through Teach For America. It was trial by fire her first year, as this was a struggling school and many students had a trauma history. It is Teach For America’s mission to place teachers in the most needy schools. Candace was very enthusiastic, but didn’t know much about trauma and its effects, other than what she intuitively felt...

Absent investments, 200 million children may not reach their potential, experts say [ScienceDaily.com]

Thirty-one academic experts in children's health argue that absent urgent action by international aid agencies, 200 million children around the world could sustain serious, lifelong cognitive impairment. The National Academy of Medicine Perspective article makes the case that global policy lags behind the science of brain health, and children must be given the opportunity not just to survive, but thrive. Neil Boothby, the Allan Rosenfield Professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of...

How Much Sleep Teen Gets Can Predict Daytime Mood [PsychCentral.com]

New research finds that when teens receive an insufficient amount of sleep they show a heightened variability in sadness, anger, energy, and feelings of sleepiness. Investigators also discovered that a poor night sleep can set up a vicious cycle as nightly fluctuations in sleep among healthy teens predicted a worse mood the next day. Also, a poor mood on any given day predicted unusually bad sleep the next night. Researchers believe promoting healthy sleep among adolescents could potentially...

Preschool Teachers Earn Less Than Tree Trimmers [TheAtlantic.com]

In the past several decades, advances in brain science have suggested that the learning that occurs in the first few years of a child’s life lays the groundwork for a productive adulthood. The expansion of preschool is one of the few topics where both Republicans and Democrats in Congress find common ground; while lawmakers don’t always agree on how programs should be funded or structured, the belief that good early-childhood education can help prevent later gaps in test scores and...

Low wages undermine efforts to improve the quality of preschools, federal report says [EdSource.org]

Efforts in California and other states to raise the quality of child care and preschool programs are being undermined by the low wages that workers earn in jobs that now require more skills and education, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Education released Tuesday. In California, preschool teachers were paid an average salary of $31,720 in 2015, about half of what California kindergarten teachers earned that year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the report said.

Houston’s solution to the homeless crisis: Housing — and lots of it [SeattleTimes.com]

Anthony Humphrey slept on the pavement outside a downtown Houston drop-in center. Except when a Gulf Coast rainstorm slammed the city — then he took cover under a storefront awning or below Interstate 45. He had no driver’s license, no Social Security card, almost no hope. That was in 2014. This month, Humphrey will celebrate a year in his apartment. “Someone came up to me,” the 50-year-old recalled. “He said, ‘We know you’ve been sleeping here. We want to get you into coordinated access’ ”...

Three ways to turn schools into safe learning environments for LBGTQ students in post-Orlando America [HechingerReport.com]

The safety needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer students turned paramount Sunday when a man walked into a gay nightclub and embarked on the worst shooting in U.S. history. The symbolism of this atrocity taking place is not lost on the gay community, because bars and nightclubs have long served as some of the only spaces where LGBTQ people have felt safe. To be sure, this tragedy brings up issues that need to be addressed by our political system — like gun violence and...

Minnesota's teen births dip to historic lows [StarTribune.com]

Teen pregnancies and births in Minnesota dropped sharply in 2014, according to a state report released Wednesday, extending a long trend and defying a common misconception that today’s youths are hypersexual. Minnesota’s teen birthrate dropped by 8 percent in 2014 — and has fallen 58 percent since 1990 — reaching 15.5 births per 1,000 females aged 15 to 19, the report showed. “It flies in the face of what many people tend to think is going on with teenagers — that things are as bad as ever,”...

Teaching Resilience? Is It Possible?

When I hear the word "resilience" in the context of helping children or students to manage their toxic stress, I object, respectfully, to the individual making the statement. In this article in the Atlantic Monthly -- "How Kids Learn Resilience" -- I came across an interesting admission. “For all our talk about noncognitive skills, nobody has yet found a reliable way to teach kids to be grittier or more resilient. And it has become clear, at the same time, that the educators who are best...

Poisoning America’s Children [HuffingtonPost.com]

This spring, communities across the nation have been celebrating Safe Kids Day. As the season began, a tweet arrived. “Every minute of every day, there’s a call to poison control because a kid gets into medicine,” it said. “Learn more.” I was overwhelmed. I had just wrapped my brain around the water situation in Flint, Michigan. While the politicians were casting blame and flexing their sanctimonious muscles, #WhatAboutThe Babies?” had become a hashtag. “Help bring water and wipes to the...

AAP endorses new recommendations on sleep times [AAPPublications.org]

Teens should sleep eight to 10 hours per night while younger children need even more sleep, according to new recommendations from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM). The group lays out optimal amounts of sleep for children of different ages in the June 13 statement Recommended Amount of Sleep for Pediatric Populations , which has been endorsed by the AAP. “Regularly sleeping fewer than the number of recommended hours is associated with attention, behavior, and learning problems,”...

How ageism can negatively affect the health of older adults [HealthJournalism.org]

Older adults are commonly subjected to a variety of negative stereotypes – bumbling, helpless, cranky, unapproachable, child-like, to name a few. Ageism has real mental and physical health consequences, including a decreased will to live, less desire to live a healthy lifestyle, an impaired recovery from illness, increased stress and a shortened life span. “Ageism remains one of the most institutionalized forms of prejudice today,” according to Todd Nelson, Ph.D., professor of psychology at...

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