January - 2020

Featured Fellow: Jaime Ela, a Maine Principal Implementing Trauma-Informed Learning in the Classroom

Jan 14, 2020
3 min

Featured Fellow: Jaime Ela, a Maine Principal Implementing Trauma-Informed Learning in the Classroom

By Kelsey Remeis, CEI Intern Jaime Ela, a C-TLC Fellow, is a Pre-K-2nd Grade Principal at two Maine schools, Libby Tozier and Sabattus Primary Schools. Jaime, a second year principal in her Maine district, has continually worked to educate teachers about the benefits of building relationships within the school community. She has been shifting away from some of the traditional approaches to behavior challenges and working towards more effective strategies. Jaime is cultivating

Center for Educational Improvement

Jan 14, 2020
3 min

Featured Fellow: Jaime Ela, a Maine Principal Implementing Trauma-Informed Learning in the Classroom

Establishing Mindful School Communities to Bring Healing to Education and Beyond

Dana Asby

Jan 14, 2020
5 min

Establishing Mindful School Communities to Bring Healing to Education and Beyond

By Dana Asby, CEI Director of Innovation & Research Support As neuroscience research becomes more widely disseminated and “trauma-informed” is one of the hottest buzzwords in education, leaders are asking themselves how to integrate their epiphanies about what students and teachers need to succeed into the school communities they’ve long established. As more and more educators move from thinking, “What’s wrong with Johnny?” to “What happened to Johnny and what does he need to

Visioning with Intention to Change the World by Inspiring the Next Generation of Leaders

Dana Asby

Jan 14, 2020
4 min

Visioning with Intention to Change the World by Inspiring the Next Generation of Leaders

By Dana Asby, CEI Director of Innovation & Research Support What do great schools have in common? What sets a successful school apart from a struggling one? Our decades of work in the classroom, consulting with school leaders, and looking at the research base have led us to conclude that one of the defining characteristics of an exceptional school is a sense of purpose. Driving that sense of purpose is always a group of dedicated and tireless educators. Behind those educators

Destiny, Education, and Next Steps to Address Mental Health Challenges

Center for Educational Improvement

Jan 14, 2020
7 min

Destiny, Education, and Next Steps to Address Mental Health Challenges

By Dr. Christine Mason, CEI Executive Director The great existential and humanistic psychologist Rollo May, in the foreword to his book Freedom and Destiny (1999), writes, “Freedom is how we relate to our destiny, and destiny is significant only because we have freedom. In the struggle of our freedom against and with destiny, our creativity and our civilizations themselves are born.” (p. xi.) The struggle “against and with destiny” is an interesting paradox—Does destiny allow

Center for Educational Improvement

Jan 13, 2020
4 min

The Center for Educational Improvement in the Next Decade: Focusing on Alleviating Childhood Trauma

By Dana Asby, CEI Director of Innovation & Research Support The demands of the 21st Century, and the resulting stress that affects students, staff, and the greater community, have left many educational leaders pondering a key question: How to balance state and federal standards and requirements with their instinctual understanding that what children—and the adults who serve them—most need is love? At the Center for Educational Improvement (CEI), we spent the last decade advoc