June 20, 2017
Delaware News
Brandywine Buzz
Teachers say social-emotional learning can lead to healthier, happier kids
As teachers, we know our jobs involve a lot more than academics. There are students in each of our classrooms who are suffering through stress and trauma at home, be it from poverty, hunger, divorce, addiction, violence, a learning disability, or otherwise, which can batter a child’s sense of self-worth, or hamper their ability to focus and learn.
Rodel Blog
Digging Deeper: The Shocking pervasiveness of ACEs and Trauma among Delaware Students
Delaware kids are experiencing trauma at alarming rates. Trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are alarmingly prevalent among Delaware’s children. One out of five kids in Delaware have experienced two or more ACEs. However, it’s not just low-income kids or kids of color that are afflicted. Trauma and ACEs impact all children, regardless of race, socioeconomic background, or ability.
Sussex County Post
Legislative tributes salute Dr. Bunting’s career, impact in Indian River district
For more than a decade, Dr. Susan Bunting was on stage as Indian River School District’s top administrator. Nearly five months after she retired as district superintendent to become secretary of Delaware’s Department of Education, Dr. Bunting was on stage as a special honoree at the June 19 IRSD board of education meeting. State Senate and House of Representatives tributes punctuated the presentation saluting Dr. Bunting for her 39 years of employment with the Indian River district and her positive impact on scores of students, staff, families, and the school district community.
Barriers conquered, Stanford next for Sussex Central valedictorian
Just over six years ago, Jean-Akim Cameus left Haiti with his mother and siblings for America. His father stayed behind. When Jean-Akim arrived on March 26, 2011, he couldn’t speak a lick of English. For the most part, Jean-Akim licked the language barrier. And he certainly has licked academics. So much so that he earned the academic distinction of valedictorian for Sussex Central High School’s Class of 2017 and one of the stage keynote speakers at the May 30 commencement.
The News Journal
NCCo Vo-Tech’s Gehrt state superintendent of the year
New Castle County Vo-Tech’s Vicki Gehrt has been named the 2017-18 Delaware School Superintendent of the Year. Superintendent at NCCo Vo-Tech since August 2011, she will represent Delaware in Nashville in February when the National Superintendent of the Year is announced, according to the Delaware Department of Education’s Facebook page.
Delaware district/charter teachers of the year named
Twenty educators were named Teacher of the Year at their individual school districts and are now in the running for 2018 State Teacher of the Year, according to the Department of Education. Selected from among the 9,000 public school teachers in the state, the candidates were nominated by their districts or the Delaware Charter School Network because of their ability to inspire students with a love of learning, demonstration of professional traits and devotion to teaching.
National News
Education Week
How a simple writing exercise in middle school led to higher college enrollment
A little push at the right time can help move disadvantaged black and Latino students onto the path to college years later, according to two new experimental studies. In several studies over the last decade, researchers led by Stanford University education psychologists J. Parker Goyer and Geoffrey Cohen randomly assigned some black, Latino, and white students to explore their values in a brief series of writing assignments in middle schools.
The Atlantic
How private funding creates disparities among Detroit’s pre-k classrooms
LaWanda Marshall and Candace Graham both teach pre-kindergarten at the Carver STEM Academy on Detroit’s west side. Both have colorful, toy-filled classrooms, computers for students to use and assistant teachers to help guide their 4- and 5-year-olds as they learn and explore. But Marshall’s classroom has other things too—lots and lots of other things that regularly arrive like gifts from the pre-K gods.
The New York Times
Dallas schools, long segregated, charge forward on diversity
Michael Hinojosa was about to enter the ninth grade in Dallas when a federal judge ordered the city’s public schools to integrate. It was 1971, and Mr. Hinojosa, the Mexican-American son of a preacher, was suddenly reassigned to a new school, whose football coach told him that it was too late to join the squad — its roster had been set months earlier. “I had a traumatic experience” with desegregation, Mr. Hinojosa said.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Missouri wraps up plan to fix failing schools
Missouri’s state school board will finalize its federally mandated plan on Tuesday on how it will identify, then fix its lowest-performing public schools. But it won’t change much for schools in Missouri, where state education officials have already taken over failing school districts under their own already well-established school rating system.