The Center for Health and Human Services
All Children Excelling: an Adverse Childhood Experiences Toolkit
The Center for Health and Human Services received a “Building Strong Brains” grant from the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services, beginning July 1, 2018. The purpose of this grant was to create an Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) toolkit that could be applied across multiple disciplines, with a focus on educating as many future professionals as possible on the risks and impact of ACEs in the lives of Tennessee’s children.
The “All Children Excelling” toolkit is the product of this year-long endeavour. It was developed in partnership between CHHS and eight different MTSU departments and programs, and with support from Frameworks Institute and TSU’s Center of Excellence for Learning Sciences. The Toolkit provides faculty with recommended resources, lesson plan outlines, in-class and out-of-class assignment suggestions, and visual aids to use in their classrooms.
The “All Children Excelling” Toolkit contains five lesson plan Modules that address various topics relating to Adverse Childhood Experiences. Module I provides an overview of ACEs, while Modules II through IV address deeper and more complex topics. Module V provides topics that are specialized for particular disciplines: Community and Public Health, Early Childhood Development, Elementary and Special Education, Public Policy, and Library Sciences. In addition, the toolkit includes a USB drive containing a majority of the resources referenced in the toolkit as well as other helpful information.
These modules are designed to be easily integrated into almost any higher education classroom, across a broad range of disciplines. Faculty are encouraged to review the toolkit, reflect on their particular course offerings, and select lesson plans that fit naturally into the subject matter already existing in their curriculum. The Module I lesson plans can be used individually for a brief topic overview, or they can be combined with more complex topics found in the later modules for a longer lesson plan that provides opportunity for a more in-depth experience for students.
The Center for Health and Human Services has additional resources at their offices that are available to MTSU faculty for use in conjunction with the toolkit. CHHS has copies of the Brain Architecture Game available for classroom check out. If faculty interested in showing the movies “Resilience” or “Paper Tigers” as part of their toolkit integration, you may reserve the DVD through the Center.
Please contact Sarah Gwinn at 615-494-8986 or sarah.gwinn@mtsu.edu for more information about these additional resources or to request a hardcopy of the “All Children Excelling” toolkit. A digital version of the toolkit is available for download: “All Children Excelling: an Adverse Childhood Experiences Toolkit“