Los Angeles Unified School District
Director of school mental health and crisis counseling and intervention services for the Los Angeles Unified School District.
PROFILE
Pia Escudero
Guest
FROM Pia Escudero
Press Play with Madeleine Brand
After witnessing school shootings, how do kids cope? Some of the children who experienced the shooting at North Park Elementary School yesterday are likely to suffer from Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Kids who experience violence can have their lives upended by the emotional toll. It can keep them from doing well in school, and even functioning well in their lives outside the classrooms.
Which Way, L.A.?
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in L.A. Schools With hugs all around, Mayor Villaraigosa , LA’s elected School Board and Superintendent Brewer announced today that the Mayor will try to improve student performance in two high schools and their feeder schools. The specific schools have not been named and the Teachers’ Union is worried about what it calls “hostile takeovers”. Meantime, here’s some insight into why children in troubled neighborhoods don’t do well in school. An astonishing number have PTSD —post traumatic stress disorder—at nearly twice the rate of the troops coming back from Iraq. LA Unified is one of the few urban districts that acknowledge the problem. A special thank you to Jill Tucker of the San Francisco Chronicle for today's topic.
Recommended
Film Reviews
First Man Here’s the radical notion behind Damien Chazelle’s “First Man”: Tell the story of mankind’s boldest adventure thus far, the Apollo 11 mission that reached the moon nearly a half-century ago, but tell it through a taciturn, emotionally closed-off hero, Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the lunar surface.
Design and Architecture
Rethinking mobility with “Flipping the Bird!” design jam Love ‘em or hate ‘em, dockless e-scooters have disrupted the cities they land in. Can "game thinking" help us think more creatively, and less reactively, about their potential? That’s the question at the heart of an event this Saturday at noon called "Flipping the Bird!" It’s a collaboration between KCRW, DnA and IndieCade, the international festival of independent games.
Press Play with Madeleine Brand
The ‘Hollywood Godfather’ you’ve never heard of You’ve probably never heard of Billy Wilkerson, but he had a huge influence on Hollywood. He started the blacklist during the Red Scare, and there might not have been a Clark Gable without him.
The Business
Justine Bateman on her new book, ‘Fame: The Hijacking of Reality' What’s it like to be suddenly famous at 16? Justine Bateman found out when she was cast as Mallory in the hit NBC sitcom ‘Family Ties.’ More than 30 years later, she has a lot to say about fame--so much, in fact, that she’s written a book on the subject. 'Fame' explores having it, losing it, and the country's undying obsession with it.