So...
I've been sitting on this idea for a few weeks now, letting it marinate in my brain, and now it's time to put some concrete thoughts out there. Here goes:
Over this summer, I read a book with the Teach For America online book club called "How Students Succeed" by Paul Tough. Overall, I learned a lot from the book but one certain point stuck out to me: the ACE Test. Before the novel, I had never heard of ACE and was floored by the idea and the implications it comes with. The ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) Test is a guideline to map the traumatic experiences a person under 18 has faced in their lifetime. These range from abuse, to neglect, to behavior and so on. The idea of the test is that the higher the person scores out of ten (4 or above) the more at risk they are for health problems, social and emotional problems, and problems with their learning (the part that attracted me). Children that have high ACE scores are constantly in flight, fight or freeze mode which affects their executive functions like working memory. This in turn gives them a harder time learning in school.
This year I am interested in doing research on the ACE test and how it affects students' reading skills. One of my ideas is to administer the test to a group of students, chart their ACE scores, chart their reading scores, identify where they are struggling, and if intervention in that area with a caring individual helps them (hopefully through the OhioReads program that I already work with at Winton Hills). I would hope to char the students for a year.
Another idea I had is to find a way to add literary elements to the ACE test like "I was never read to, given books, taken to the library..." etc. and see if that correlates with students that have high ACE scores and low reading scores. I would also like to add this category to the Resilience Test and see if it affects the outcomes of the ACE test for the students in a positive or negative way.
Stay tuned-we'll see if this ball gets set in motion.
Over this summer, I read a book with the Teach For America online book club called "How Students Succeed" by Paul Tough. Overall, I learned a lot from the book but one certain point stuck out to me: the ACE Test. Before the novel, I had never heard of ACE and was floored by the idea and the implications it comes with. The ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) Test is a guideline to map the traumatic experiences a person under 18 has faced in their lifetime. These range from abuse, to neglect, to behavior and so on. The idea of the test is that the higher the person scores out of ten (4 or above) the more at risk they are for health problems, social and emotional problems, and problems with their learning (the part that attracted me). Children that have high ACE scores are constantly in flight, fight or freeze mode which affects their executive functions like working memory. This in turn gives them a harder time learning in school.
This year I am interested in doing research on the ACE test and how it affects students' reading skills. One of my ideas is to administer the test to a group of students, chart their ACE scores, chart their reading scores, identify where they are struggling, and if intervention in that area with a caring individual helps them (hopefully through the OhioReads program that I already work with at Winton Hills). I would hope to char the students for a year.
Another idea I had is to find a way to add literary elements to the ACE test like "I was never read to, given books, taken to the library..." etc. and see if that correlates with students that have high ACE scores and low reading scores. I would also like to add this category to the Resilience Test and see if it affects the outcomes of the ACE test for the students in a positive or negative way.
Stay tuned-we'll see if this ball gets set in motion.