From the Psychology Today blog- Resilience Matters in Traumatized Children, and Sensory Activities Make the Difference

Cathy Malchiodi's recent article in Psychology Today's blog discusses the topic of resilience among traumatized children and how engaging the senses through a variety of activities, combined with positive relationships and environments can make a difference.

As a school psychologist, I work with occupational therapists, and over the years, I've learned how important it is to address sensory issues with children and teens who have autism spectrum disorders. Cathy Malchiodi wrote her post while attending the 4th Annual Childhood Trauma Practitioners Assembly. According to the conference website, the following topics were covered:

"Areas of interest include intervention approaches, research, and resource specific to:

• Posttraumatic Growth Resilience
• Complex Cumulative Trauma: Research/Interventions
• School-Based Programs
• Community-Based Programs (hospitals, mental health agencies, family services)
• Interventions for Special Populations (special needs students, children immigrating from war torn countries, Native American Indians – other diverse populations).
• Interventions using Expressive Therapies/Interventions
• Interventions for other trauma related behaviors (OCD like behavior, agoraphobic like behavior) or anxiety disorders – separation anxiety disorder, shyness, social phobia, agoraphobia, etc.
• Research which supports practice (versus theory). Evidenced based research on interventions with traumatized children is limited at this time. "

Cathy's post provides a good overview of research among those who focus on sensory and somatic interventions, which includes addressing support for three regions of the brain - the cortex/thinking brain, the limbic system/emotional brain, and the brain stem/survival brain.

For more information, read the post, and follow the related links:

Resilience Matters in Traumatized Children's Lives -- and Sensory Activities Make the Difference (Cathy Malchiodi, Psychology Today, 7/14/09)

It would be interesting to see how multi-modal technologies could be used to address some of the sensory issues among this group of children!

Black Briefcase, a school psychologist's blog..."I didn't know there were people in the building (school) who didn't know how to turn on the computer"

The Black Briefcase blog is written by a school psychologist who writes about "true tales from a School Psychologist. An ongoing monologue about the state of education and what's really happening inside our schools."

I especially liked this post:

Land of the Luddites

"Maybe Luddite is too strong of a word. Technologically naive seems more appropriate. I've been on a crusade to get people in my school to embrace basic technology: email, web-based programs, word processing programs, i.e., nothing fancy. As I've been trying to educate others I've noticed the different levels of technology naivete that people have in my building. My district, like many others in the nation, has moved towards using a web-based program for writing IEPs. The problem has been that only two people out of 6 are comfortable enough with the program to complete an IEP. Everyone else has expressed their trepidation towards using the computer. One of the drawbacks is that the entry fields do not appear as they do within an IEP so that those who are used to completing them by hand do not know what they are looking at on the computer...." -Black Briefcase

This sounds a lot like the EasyIEP program that was adopted by my school district this year! It doesn't map to the real world, and for teachers who aren't used to doing more than sending e-mail, the application can be quite daunting.


Black Briefcase goes on to provide a couple of examples that shed light on why technology is lagging in many many classrooms:

"The last week, I've experienced two different eye-opening moments on the vast technological divide that exists in my school. Those on the inexperienced end amaze me. I was asked by a co-worker how to attach a file to an email. I thought that was the lowest, but that was beaten the next day. I was sitting in my office when I got an internal call from another room. A teacher was on the other line and she asked me if I had turned off the computer when I used it in the lab. I used the lab when I taught my coworkers how to use the web-based program last week. I guess I turn off the computer out of habit; I was finished using it so it seemed like the thing to do. I didn't know that there were people in the building that didn't know how to turn on the computer. So I figured it must have been something complex. I went to the lab to see what was wrong. The LCD projector was working so that was one less problem to deal with, but the screen was black. I thought that maybe something was unplugged and when I looked at the computer, I realized that it wasn't on. I pressed the button on the CPU and the computer sprang to life. It couldn't have been that easy, I figured that I would have to do something more than that. Well it appeared that the teacher was pressing the wrong button. Instead of the on/off switch she was pressing the button that opens the CPU. If you're familiar with old Dell computers then you know what I'm talking about. She was pressing the wrong button and couldn't understand why it wouldn't turn on. That was a new one for me. I thought I had seen it all until that moment." -Black Briefcase

One of Black Briefcase's solutions to address the "luddite" phenomenon is to share tech tips from David Pogue's New York Times blog post. That is a great idea!

"A Fresh Look at Brain-Based Education": Info from Eric P. Jensen's article in the Phi Delta Kappan; Dr. Judy Willis

"Brain-Based Education" is a buzz-phrase that educators have been hearing about for a while now. I'm sure that some of us have wondered if the term has been over used in an attempt to sell more educational materials and products.

Connie Weber, a member of HASTAC, posted an interesting message in the HASTAC on Ning forum about an article written by Eric P. Jensen in the February 2008 issue of the Phi Delta Kappan (Vol. 89. No.6)


From Connie Weber--

"This article in Phi Delta Kappan got me thinking a lot. Here's a list of 10 connections for educators; surely these discoveries have relevance for our Cybernetic Age, for planning out how to nurture positive brain development..."

From Jensen:

"Schools present countless opportunities to affect students' brains. Such issues as stress, exercise, nutrition, and social conditions are all relevant, brain-based issues that affect cognition, attention, classroom discipline, attendance, and memory. Our new understanding is that every school day changes the student's brain in some way. Once we make those connections, we can make choices in how we prioritize policies and strategies. Here are some of the powerful connections for educators to make."

...

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ERIC P. JENSEN is a former middle school teacher and adjunct professor for the University of California, San Diego. He co-founded the Brain Store and the Learning Brain EXPO and has written 21 books on the brain and learning. His most recent book is Enriching the Brain (Jossey-Bass, 2006). He currently is a doctoral student in Media Psychology at Fielding Graduate University, Santa Barbara, Calif. (c)2008, Eric P. Jensen.

FYI

Somewhere in the TechPsych archives is my previous post on this topic, highlighting the work of Dr. Judy Willis. Dr. Willis is a board-certified neurologist who practiced neurology for 20 years. She is now a teacher at Santa Barbara Middle school. She is the author "The Neuroscience of Joyful Education", an article that appeared in the Summer 2007 edition of Educational Leadership.

Dr. Willis is the author of Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning: Insights from a Neurologist/Classroom Teacher and Brain Friendly Strategies for the Inclusion Classroom". (These are two books worth reading!)

Judy Willis (jwillisneuro@aol.com; www.RADTeach.com)