We recently worked with the Denver office of the Corporation for National and Community Service to map the AmeriCorps programs – like City Year, Teach for America, and Reading Partners – that are operating in Denver Public Schools. This map shows which DPS schools, color-coded by school type, have AmeriCorps programs in 2012-2013. The larger a school’s dot, the more programs it has. If you mouse over a school, you’ll be able to see the names of its programs. Click on a point to find more information. You can pan and zoom the map to see more detail, or view… Read the Rest
The Glory apartment building sits near the southwest corner of Yosemite Street and 14th Avenue in Aurora. The building resembles a wide, fat U, apartment doors opening to walkways, walkways looking down upon the concrete slab that is the courtyard. Residents drift in and out to smoke a cigarette, to see who’s up to what. On warmer days, they hang their laundry over the railing and the doors stay open. Many of this building’s residents are refugees from Burma, also known as Myanmar. They are ethnic Karen, Karenni, Chin, Shan, Mon. They crowd into apartments, shoes piled near the door,… Read the Rest
More on the effect of chronic stress on the brains of children and the implication for anti-poverty measures. This one from New York Times’ columnist Nick Kristoff. Here quoting Paul Tough: “(The science) says that the character strengths that matter so much to young people’s success are not innate; they don’t appear in us magically, as a result of good luck or good genes. And they are not simply a choice. They are rooted in brain chemistry, and they are molded, in measurable and predictable ways, by the environment in which kids grow up. That means the rest of us… Read the Rest
Reading about the effect of chronic stress on young brains had me thinking about my last visit to Denver. It was a month ago. I went to see Jennifer Herrera. She’s executive director of Colfax Community Network, a nonprofit serving homeless families. It’s on Kingston Street. See the map of where the most vulnerable children live in the Children’s Corridor? There, in Original Aurora, in the bluest of the blue circles, that’s where you’ll find CCN.  Many of its families live in hotels along East Colfax Avenue. The families may have a bed at night, but their living situations are precarious… Read the Rest
If you have not yet seen the video introducing the Children’s Corridor, you might want to take five minutes to do so. It debuted earlier this month at the Colorado Children’s Campaign annual luncheon, where the keynote speaker was Dr. Jack P. Shonkoff. Shonkoff, a pediatrician, is also director of Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child. I wish I could have been there. So much fascinating, ground-shifting research in now coalescing around the brain development of children and, in particular, on the impacts of chronic — or toxic — stress on the very structure of the brain. As… Read the Rest
