How can we create healthy school climates to help all students succeed?

Negative experiences at home don't disappear when students arrive at school.

Experiences like physical, emotional or sexual abuse, having mental illness in the home or having an incarcerated family member can have profound impacts on the developing brain. Students experiencing these and other Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are more likely to struggle in school.

And those experiences follow us well into adulthood.

'Most people that you run into have had some kind of trauma in their childhood,' said Liz Cox, Executive Director of Prevent Child Abuse Iowa.

At Iowa Ideas 2017, September 20-22 in Cedar Rapids, panelists had an in-depth discussion on ACEs in Iowa and what schools and communities can do to address them.

Panelists included:

• Liz Cox, Executive Director of Prevent Child Abuse Iowa

• Lane Plugge, Chief Administrator of the Green Hills AEA (which covers part of the state that has some of the highest percentages of ACEs)

• Jan Powers, a former school counselor who is now conducting doctoral research on ACEs

• Moderator: Molly Duffy, Gazette K-12 education reporter

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Listen to the full replay to hear:

• Data on ACEs in Iowa, from the 2016 ACEs 360 report.

• How ACEs impact the brain and learning -- and continue to impact Iowans into adulthood

• Efforts underway in Iowa: What's working so far, and what needs more attention

• How the Every Student Succeeds Act is putting an emphasis on social and emotional learning and how these new metrics are being implemented in Iowa

• Ideas of organizations that can be good partners in helping all students succeed

More from Iowa Ideas:

• The 'unfortunate bystanders' in homelessness are Iowa's children

• Building resiliency against Adverse Childhood Experiences

• A look into one of Iowa's poorest schools