26 Schools Plan to Raise Awareness of Trauma-Informed Care.
School District U-46 is inviting local organizations to join the District in recognizing Wednesday, May 15 as Trauma-Informed Awareness Day. The approach supports an informed response to students experiencing adverse situations, both past and present, and it is gaining momentum in the state’s second-largest district and across the nation.
“Trauma-informed care is a vital component of U-46’s multi-tiered system of support,” said U-46 Director of School Safety and Culture John Heiderscheidt. “It provides social-emotional supports to students who need it the most, and helps them reach academic success as they overcome adverse experiences.”
The Illinois State Senate passed a resolution in March 2019 declaring May 15 as Trauma-Informed Awareness Day, and U-46 schools will be recognizing the day by raising awareness about the importance of trauma-informed care and how it provides social and emotional support for students who have experienced any adverse childhood experiences.
Trauma-informed care prepares educators and others to better respond to students with adverse childhood experiences. It is an approach that recognizes how these experiences may affect a child in the classroom, and it gives educators tools they can implement to support students who have experienced trauma. The Adverse Childhood Experiences study performed by the Center for Disease Control found that traumatic experiences during childhood have a tremendous impact on future social and health problems.
To support U-46 schools in providing trauma-informed care, the Alignment Collaborative for Education created a team focused on providing training to teams within U-46 schools, called resiliency teams. Since 2017, 26 schools in U-46 have formed resiliency teams.
On May 15, school resiliency team staff will tie a purple ribbon around the flagpole at their school and wear Trauma-Informed Care Awareness Day stickers in an effort to raise awareness and start conversations about trauma-informed care.
Local organizations are invited to join U-46 in recognizing May 15 as Trauma-Informed Awareness Day. Packets containing stickers and a purple ribbon will be available for pickup at the District’s Educational Service Center, 355 E. Chicago Street. More information about trauma-informed care can be found on the U-46 website.
Big thanks to HARTING-North America in Elgin for sharing your day with more than 90 freshmen from the Bartlett High School STEM Academy. Students worked in teams on production questions and building a connector kit, listened to engineers talk about their work and took a tour of the facility where the company manufactures products for the connector industry. These connectors are used in mechanical and plant engineering, broadcast and entertainment, factory automation, power generation and distribution.
The Elgin Partnership for Early Learning (EPEL) in partnership with School District U-46, Gail Borden Public Library and the Alignment Collaborative for Education hosted a Call to Community on April 12, 2019 as part of the Week of the Young Child. The event was held at Gail Borden Public Library from 8:00 to 9:45 am.
The Larkin High School Career Panel was held as an all day event on March 7, 2019. In partnership with Junior Achievement (JA), Alignment recruited an industry panel composed of banking and finance, education, healthcare and public safety. Thank you to Berto Valdez from PNC Bank, Rose Diaz and Fatima Reyes from the AVID CNA program, Kathy Potts and Matt Jacobucci from the Elgin Police Department, and Ronald Raglin from School District U-46 for serving as our career panelists and to Edgar Montes from Junior Achievement. The event attracted over 400 students, including freshman, sophomores, juniors and seniors.
Vaughn Küerschner, Public Sector Representative of Waste Management, met with Alignment’s Executive Committees on February 26, 2019, to award a check of $5,000 to support Alignment’s work to improve early education offerings, build schools with trauma informed care cultures, and offer all students the opportunity to benefit from educational pathways graduating academic and career ready. Alignment greatly appreciates this donation and Waste Management’s continued support of its work for the last three years.
The Alignment Collaborative for Education received $5,000 in funding under Nicor’s The Path to Social Mobility and Enhanced Opportunities Includes Education and Career Readiness grant program. Alignment’s role is to build business and community partnerships that collaboratively offer students within School District U-46, opportunities to participate in a comprehensive career education and work readiness program. This program prepares students to gain industry recognized credentials while still in high school so that students upon graduation can immediately enter the workforce and have the necessary foundation for post-secondary education and training. We greatly appreciate the support of Jim Griffin, Nicor’s Vice President of Operations and member of Alignment’s Governing Board.
ACE is a member of the Alignment USA communities of collaboration and collective impact.
