Tag: Breakaway Learners

“Students who have experienced trauma and stress are not a small subpopulation of students.”

This book, like last week’s book, discusses “Adverse Childhood Experiences,” which is a set of 10 questions that assess the level of trauma kids experience.  These questions focus on exposure to mental illness, addiction, abandonment, hunger, physical abuse or danger, sexual assault, and imprisonment. Studies have found that about a … Read More

Best Books for College Teachers in 2017

Of the books published in 2017, here is my list of the five that have added the most to my understanding of our students, our challenges as instructors, and our need to reform our educational system.

iGen by Jean Twenge: More than any other book that I’ve read this year, … Read More

“Sadly, the reality is that more and more students entering the educational pipeline have had curdled childhoods.”

It is not poverty per se that distinguishes these students, Karen Gross writes, but it’s a childhood burdened by “hunger, exposure to or experience with drugs, alcohol, abandonment, frequent moves, abuse, self-harm or harm of others.” Do we know which of our students have had these experiences? Probably not. I … Read More