ANNOUNCER: Funding for this program has been provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, through its Culture of Health Leaders, a national leadership program that fosters collaboration between people of all fields and professions, that have an influence on people's health, to build just and thriving communities; Optum Idaho, working closely with our state to manage outpatient behavioral health benefits for Medicaid members and others to reduce stigma and promote mental well-being for all.

the Friends of Idaho Public Television; the Idaho Public Television Endowment; and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

SEAN BLACKWELL: My childhood is a bit of a mystery to me.

I had no idea that that was something problematic, the fact that you don't remember most of your childhood, can be a sign of trauma.

I remember maybe 15 to 20 minutes of everything leading up to, maybe, when I was eight years old.

It's all blank to me.

BECKY JOHNSON: I was sexually molested when I was about nine, right after we moved to Oregon, with my dad drunk in the living room.

And it was his best friend that came over and got him drunk and then abused myself and a couple of siblings.

LUIS GRANADOS: I remember running around with all the kids, the neighborhood kids, and running around a corner and seeing my brother on the ground getting kicked and beat up by a bunch of kids.

And I just stopped, froze in my tracks.

I wasn't quite sure what was going on.

I just sat there and stared in, you know, in disbelief, and I felt like I couldn't do anything about it.

Well, the next thing you know they picked him up and started hugging him, telling him good job, you know, congratulating him.

Little did I know they were jumping him into a gang.

SHANNON MCGUIRE: My brother died when I was nine, he was eight.

He was hit by a car behind me, and that changed my life, that moment.

The community blamed me because after he was hit I went out, and I picked him by his arms like, get up; that's all I could think, it's like, get up are you okay?

NARRATOR: These people all have something in common.

They've experienced significant adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs for short.

If left unresolved or untreated, those experiences can create childhood trauma and toxic stress that may last a lifetime.

ROGER SHERMAN: ACEs stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences, based on a study that was done 20-some years ago in San Diego with Kaiser Permanente and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And it focused on the impact of ten different adversities that impact children's lives, throughout their life, because, as we like to say these days, childhood lasts a lifetime.

NARRATOR: The ACE study measured three types of childhood adversity, abuse, neglect, and serious family dysfunction.

Abuse can be physical, emotional, or sexual.

The second type is neglect and can be physical or emotional.

The third, serious household dysfunction includes substance abuse, violence towards a child's mother, an incarcerated relative, divorce, or mental illness of a parent.

Research shows the more ACEs a person has, the more likely they are to develop potentially serious health problems later in life.

DR. NOREEN WOMACK: I've been a pediatrician, now, for about 20 years, and it was plain to see that the children who went through difficult circumstances in their early childhood definitely had not just behavior consequences but medical consequences as well.

One of the things that we've discovered about toxic stress and adverse childhood experiences is that it actually does change brain architecture.

It changes the way the neural connections in our brain connect, like which areas connect with which.

NARRATOR: Roger Sherman has been with the Idaho Children's Trust Fund since 2007.

The nonprofit's mission is to prevent childhood abuse and neglect.

ROGER SHERMAN: It matters what happens to kids.

It doesn't just matter to that family or to that kid.

It matters to all of us.

NARRATOR: That's critical, especially when you look at the most shocking findings of the ACEs study.

ROGER SHERMAN: If you have six or more ACEs, you are likely to live 20 years shorter than a person who is not impacted by those ACEs.

JEAN MUTCHIE: Understanding the ACEs science wasn't really shocking, but it was more confirming, that there really is a reason why we start to see people suffer from chronic dideases more than other people.

And even in our own community in Nampa we talk about your ZIP code can be more predictive of your health and your genetic code.

People where I live, live nine and a half years longer than people four miles away from my house.

So what really causes that?

And how, then, do we work to really mitigate before people become really sick?

BECKY JOHNSON: I have a 10-out-of-10 ACE score, so that covers the whole gamut from neglect to abuse to sexual trauma, everything.

My father was a drug addict and an alcoholic, and my mom was the focus of his abuse most of the time.

So the neglect part would come in when my dad was really drunk and just not showing up for us.

I learned about ACEs in class, at Walla Walla.

And one of the professors had us take the test.

And at first I was just, like, oh, my gosh, I'm looking around the room, and everybody else is, like -- they kind of had us raise our hands for, like, general ranges of numbers.

And myself and one other person, were the only ones to raise our hand for 8 and above.

And I was, like, wow, that's huge.

But it also was a relief.

A lot of my medical issues that I have now were explained by my childhood ACEs.

And it was just like, oh, I'm not -- I'm not insane, like -- for lack of a better word.

There's a reason behind what's going on with me, which was a huge relief more than a surprise, I guess.

ROGER SHERMAN: ACEs don't just affect behavior, which is what I think people start to think immediately.

If you've been in an abusive household, some of your behavior might be impacted by that in the classroom or other places, you're going to be angry or other things.

But really what the startling part of this is it affects physical health.

Holding that much stress in your body causes heart disease, causes various kinds of lung problems, diabetes, other kinds of issues that you just would not expect would be part of this conversation.

JEAN MUTCHIE: I thought that looking at adverse childhood experiences but then really resilience as sort of the anecdote to that would be really fascinating as a project.

So from that work sprung the Idaho Resilience Project, which really started as a group of people coming into a coffee shop and saying, what causes it?

What do we do?

And how do we look at really making sure that this expands across the state?

At Idaho Resilience Project we really wanted to see the work become more regionalized.

The first attempt of that is 2C Kids Succeed, which is collaborative across Canyon County.

That one has shaped up to be really interesting.

We have judges and prosecuting attorneys and mayors and county commissioners, and then people, again, from nonprofits and healthcare and police officers all leaning in to say, what do we want to focus on, how do we want to change the trajectory for our kids?

So trying to keep kids from entering the juvenile justice system early really keeps them embedded in school.

We really don't want to have a school-to-prison pipeline.

Dr. CHRIS STREETER: In my practice I haven't seen a child that hasn't had an adverse childhood event or their parent.

They're very ubiquitous; it's super common.

In fact, it's more common to have them than not.

Using that as a starting point for parents and grandparents, and not minimizing but helping normalize adverse childhood events I think is very useful for people.

NARRATOR: In the United States almost half of the population has experienced at least one ACE.

In Idaho children have higher ACE scores in three areas.

JEAN MUTCHIE: We are tied for about the fifth highest in the country for kids who experienced three or more adverse childhood experiences.

We also see that Idaho has a disproportionate number of kids who live in households with mental illness, live below the poverty line, and then also who have substance use disorders that are prevalent in their home.

NARRATOR: But there is hope.

Research shows that if a child has even just one positive person in their life, the long-term negative health effects of ACEs can be prevented.

They can be resilient.

They can bounce forward after trauma.

ROGER SHERMAN: If they have someone in their life who buffers that really serious problem, it may not even become a traumatic event.

Things like divorce, even death of a family member, those things can be mitigated if people help you deal with your grief, if there is co-parenting that goes on.

If there are things in your life that make those really difficult situations understandable, they become situations that people can deal with.

And when they can deal with them, they can move on with their life.

CHRIS STREETER: We're really looking for some person that is a stable, caring adult.

And that person can be a coach, it can be a teacher, it can be someone serving lunch at the school.

You never know where a child is going to connect with someone who's stable and caring.

SHANNON MCGUIRE: I've had so many just really kind people.

I had a great mentor, she was a teacher.

She sort of adopted me under her wing.

Mrs. Bowen shined a light on me and gave me a different view of the world.

As I go back in that time machine, I think about my childhood.

My brother died at eight, and from that moment my life just went into a tornado.

I was there for the LA riots.

That was the time of the crack epidemic, gangs, that was -- murder, it was crazy.

And that was my world at nine.

Everything that I've been through, according to statistics, I shouldn't be sitting here.

I shouldn't be having this conversation.

I should be dead, I should be on drugs, I should be in jail.

So I would say my resilience is just knowing that there's hope, hope that tomorrow is another day, tomorrow can be a brighter day.

SEAN BLACKWELL: I don't remember my childhood, most of its gone.

I can remember being in a Greyhound bus station, making my way across the states with my dad.

I can remember the time when I was abandoned by my mother.

I experienced homelessness.

I certainly had a lot of anger as a kid.

I struggled with poor performance in school, poor behavior.

I was expelled at one point.

And then right around when I was 14 or 15, I started to have a few really amazing mentors come into my life.

They came into my life in a time where I felt incredibly isolated and misunderstood, and they helped me see that the future could be something beautiful and rich and rewarding.

And because of them I got my life together.

BECKY JOHNSON: I think the biggest thing that helped is just the people that came into my life to help and cared.

My dad was in and out of jail, and he's been in and out of the mental institution.

So when he passed it was kind of a blessing for our family in some ways, but really confusing because we also loved him and missed him.

So much dysfunction is very complicated.

That kindness that came into my life saved my life.

Being kind and showing those kids that they're loved.

Everybody needs to know that they're valuable, so being kind and caring goes a long way for someone who's struggling.

HOLLY WHITWORTH: There is no guidebook that gives you all the answers for parenting, so we revert back to what we experienced as children.

And if those adverse childhood experiences were a big part of our lives, they can make it difficult to be a parent.

So in our home visiting program with parents as teachers our focus is to help them have an understanding of child development, have them have an understanding of how their physical health and their emotional health is related to how they're able to parent.

WENDY WELCH: Home visiting is relationship-based.

We talk to the families about their lives, and not only what they're experiencing right now but what they've experienced in the past.

And we know that those ACEs can continue on through generations.

And without an opportunity to talk about those and to really find out what they feel about it and how they might be changing or how they might be growing, sometimes they don't really recognize that.

When I first met Lucero, she had a lot of questions.

And she has had some ACEs and some experiences in her life that have been tough.

LUCERO JIMENEZ: My mom had to go to Mexico, and then I stayed here with my brothers.

I have four brothers, I have two sisters, two brothers, and I had to take care of them.

Right now I have my two beautiful girls.

Before I have my youngest girl, I had a car accident.

It was hard for me to be stable again.

I don't know exactly what was happening, so I needed a lot of help.

I'm glad that I found these parent and teachers program.

Wendy, she's been with me through this, and she had helped me a lot.

WENDY WELCH: She continues to just make the best of things, and she loves to learn.

In every kind of home visit, she's asking questions, she's wanting to know, and that makes her a really good parent.

HOLLY WHITWORTH: If we understand that trauma is real for people, that anxiety and depression that some people feel is very real.

And if we can give understanding to that, then there is hope that we can go forward together and that healing can happen for that individual and healing can happen for all of us.

TAI SIMPSON: In my tribe and in my culture, I've always learned that babies and toddlers are tiny elders.

They're new to us in this lifetime but may have lived several lifetimes before, so we have to treat their behavior and their wisdom and the way they move through the world as if they know more than what we know as adults in our life.

And when we take a child seriously, we can learn more about ourselves than we could have possibly imagined.

At the Idaho Coalition Against Sexual & Domestic Violence.

I am a social change advocate.

And I work primarily with indigenous communities in Idaho.

Our young folks are really ready for difficult conversations and are really yearning for an opportunity to ask questions about these experiences of domestic violence that they are either witnessing or enduring.

Youth have a lot to say.

These children are looking for an adult that will hear them out rather than silencing them.

If a child doesn't have an accurate answer, they're going to make it up in their head, or they'll Google it, or they'll ask their friends.

And there's a lot of pieces missing in those conversations when it comes to their own healing, when it comes to understanding their experiences with violence or trauma.

As an organization the philosophy is really about deliberately creating spaces for thriving and for healing and for family.

For folks to thrive, I mean, that's really kind of the big vision.

Our futurist vision is that we want a community and a society in which everybody thrives.

JON EVANS: The sooner you can help a child develop those resiliency skills the better.

The Boys & Girls Club has had a profound impact on my life, as I look back.

My dad was a Vietnam vet.

He had had a really rough childhood, so for the first ten years of my life, I didn't have a real strong male role model in my life.

And when the brand-new club opened up, I was the first kid through the door when they cut the ribbon.

And I remember getting into trouble and it being the first time that I realized there wasn't physical punishment along with discipline.

And the club was that place that gave me structure.

It was that place that said there are rules, and if you break the rules there are consequences.

I started to learn what a good fatherly behavior looked like and what a positive enriching environment looked like.

The staff kind of instilled that and kept me in line.

And so that's what I think helped break the cycle, at least in our family.

I was a club kid way back in the day, and I've held about every job you can possibly have in a club, from the janitor to the executive director and everywhere in between.

So the club really changed the trajectory not just for my life but for, you know, the generations of my kids and hopefully their kids as well.

If there's nowhere for people to find a place to get help or support, those issues are just going to continue to go on and on and manifest themselves.

There's no way to help them break the cycle.

The Boys & Girls Club, it's for any kid that needs us.

There's a lot of misconceptions.

You've got folks who think it's only for low-income families.

You've got folks who think that it's only about athletics.

The club is for anybody.

Tori was one of those kids, she was ready to come to the club.

Sometimes you'll get that kindergartener who's a little nervous, the first time they've been away from mom or dad, and they're a little shy.

Tori showed up ready to go.

She was ready to be at the club and ready to be involved and has been that way, you know, for the last 13 years.

SHEILA STREIBECK: This was her safe place.

This was where she came and got to leave all the worries at the door when she would walk in.

And the staff just became family to her, so they were absolutely invaluable.

TORI BLEWETT: There was a staffer named Austin, and he did back flips.

That was, like, the coolest thing at eight years old.

That was like the one thing I remember, like, clearly.

But I've always been a part of the club because my parents divorced, and just trying to get my mind off it when I come in.

SHEILA STREIBECK: I think they were fun and they kept her motivated and reassured her that there wasn't anything she couldn't do.

And they do that with every single kid here not just her.

every single one.

All the staff, that is how they were trained, to help each child, and all these kids come from different backgrounds and a lot of different traumas.

There is a lot of childhood traumas, the club is the place where they can go to get away from all that and learn about self-respect and respecting other people and getting those connections and having people they can trust.

TORI BLEWETT: They were there for me the most.

SHEILA STREIBECK: By Tori starting this when she was five, she was able to work up to being Youth of the Year and they helped her every step of that way become the woman that she is.

TORI BLEWETT: We went to Seattle, I had to give a speech at a gala with twelve other kids that I went with.

It was just amazing.

We had this group chat.

And we still keep in touch to this day.

JON EVANS: Tori has talked about wanting to be a teacher.

I hope someday we can convince her that, you know, a Boys & Girls Club career wouldn't be such a bad thing, too.

So, she certainly has the knowledge and the understanding and the experience to put the pieces together of how to help kids.

KEITH ORCHARD: I was working for child welfare, and I approached the school district and said, we are learning some really important stuff about ACEs, about childhood trauma, and we think it would be really useful for the school district to understand that more.

So they hired me as a consultant for the first year to train central office staff and their teacher coaches.

And the second year says, well, that's great that we know this, but the teachers need to know it.

And I was hired as the mental health specialist for the Coeur d'Alene School District.

We started doing a lot of teacher training and development for how to work with some kids from hard places, some of the toughest kids, behaviorally.

And as we got in and learned more about how schools work and what is needed, we got a much bigger picture and developed a framework.

And now instead of just mental health, we are standing up a whole social emotional learning system or department within the Coeur d'Alene School District.

CARRIE SHINKLE: When I saw the ACEs study, it just was a lightbulb moment for me, divorce, parents with addictions, but also Idaho has a very high suicide rate.

There is an element of toughen up and things.

But I think for a long time we thought children were just immune to it, maybe, or not affected by it.

It revolutionized my practice as an assistant principal.

And we started working with Keith Orchard.

Instead of looking at children's behavior as defiance or, you know, some sort of power play, I came to realize that behavior communicates.

And it helped me relaize that you know, kids aren't doing this to me, to their teacher, to their peers, they're doing it because they have an unmet need.

And so when I started reframing that, it was amazing the difference it made in working with children.

The kids respond better.

You know, rather than having them comply, it was finding out what they need.

And then it's funny how as soon as you can do that and make that connection with them, the compliance just happens because they feel safe, and they feel a relationship with you.

REBEKAH COMSTOCK: I have always been a very relational teacher.

That's kind of been my strong suit is just building very intentional relationships with my kids.

I've had a couple different kiddos that I can tell when they're at their max.

And I've asked them to think deeply.

I've asked them to really grapple with something.

challenge their thinking, and they're exhausted.

There's the fatigue that goes with that.

So the sensory rooms and the sensory walks have been a great little, like, escape, and it gives them a safe place to go, and it gives them a place to feel that they can get their wiggles out, get grounded and then come back to learn.

It just changes your perspective on kids.

I think your level of empathy and understanding shifts and you start to see kids very, very differently.

You don't see them as someone who's being noncompliant or someone that just, like, hates what you're asking them to do or just want to dig their heels down and get control.

It's not about that.

It's about something deeper.

It's about something more authentic that's going on with them and who they are, and fundamentally how their brains are wired.

It sounds maybe funny to come as a teacher and say put the teaching aside.

When you do that, and you get to the child, and you get to the heart of the matter, and you get to what they need at that moment, and you word it that way, what do you need right now?

How can I help you?

Like that you flip the switch.

The kid doesn't feel on the defensive.

And sometimes it isn't easy.

Some days are rougher than others.

But I think when those kids know that you genuinely want to know who they are, what their hearts are, what they've been through and know that you're safe, and you're not going to go anywhere, then the teaching part gets easier.

KEITH ORCHARD: I think it is very empowering.

It is not a fix-all.

It is just a different mindset and a different explanation and an understanding from kids.

The beauty of it, in the end, is that they look at kids a little bit differently, and it manifests in more empathy and more understanding for why they do what they do.

Ultimately, we have teachers and adults who are calm and caring.

That's really the foundation of healing for those kids, when we have calm, caring adults that are staying in the game with the kids.

TONYA SEARS: I think Idaho is so on the right track.

we have counseling now, and at the school systems that are working within Head Start, they have really brought to the forefront trauma and informed care.

For North Idaho College Head Start I'm education disabilities manager.

I'm in charge of all the teachers, assistant teachers and classroom aides, all the training for the program, and, in particular, a social and emotional curriculum.

I travel to all nine of our North Idaho sites.

Some of our areas are an hour, hour and a half to our centers, so it's really important that we reach out to those families.

When they're in very rural areas, the only people they really talk to is within their family or their immediate neighborhoods.

This is the first time families are really trusting someone to come into their homes and to get them enrolled in schools.

Many families in North Idaho choose to homeschool their children.

They are far away, and so we're relationship-based, so when we're talking about trauma, we have to have, like, trauma relational intervention with our families.

I see generational poverty, and I see generational trauma, and oftentimes they go hand in hand.

We do seven home visits a year so that our families have that connection with not only our staff but what we're doing in the classrooms, as well.

We spend the first six weeks of the school year focusing solely on social emotional skills for our classrooms and for our families.

We often say to our families, we are not there to check your home or how you're living, we're there to support your family.

And there are so many more resources for families now.

I think the future is really bright.

I think resiliency is just on the cusp for many of our families.

KELLI KNOWLES: When I started at Kootenai Elementary School, there was a high amount of students who were having behavior problems in their classroom.

I noticed that there was a pattern, that their behavior had absolutely nothing to do with what was going on at school.

I started doing research and figuring out that these kids have adverse childhood experiences before they ever get to us.

And so reaching out and being able to just say, I need help with this, how can we partner and make this work better?

And so our community partnerships have kind of blossomed because this community values education and is realizing that education is so much more than teaching.

TRACEY KARST: We have so many community resources that come into our school.

We have counselors that come in.

We have community partners.

I have an advocate, a court-ordered advocate that comes in twice a week and volunteers.

All of our teachers are custodians.

Everybody that walks into our school and works here is trained in trauma.

And it's those little partnerships with our community that is making Kootenai school the most special place to be.

DION HELLER: The school district is actually the on-duty parent all day long, so it made sense for us to collaborate with them.

The school district sees things that we necessarily don't see.

We're in the homes, and we see things that are going on in the home that we can communicate to the school district employees as to why a kid's behaving the way that they're behaving at school.

The more people that you can get to the table, the better it is to come up with a treatment plan and everybody be on the same page, addressing the issues that are going on with the juvenile.

JOY JANSEN: Part of my responsibility is to bring programming curriculum that focuses on social and emotional learning and trauma-invested strategies to the district.

Trauma is not only just for students with low socioeconomics.

Because we are a resort destination town, seasonal, we have students that are in the low and the higher range that had trauma in their life.

KELLI KNOWLES: I think what's different about Kootenai Elementary School is that we're not in a box, and we try everything.

We don't approach school as this is what we do, and this is how you have to do it.

Especially with kids who have a lot of ACEs or come from a background with a lot of trauma, it really is going with their flow and refocusing our focus on we want these kids to learn.

That's our end goal, that's our job is to teach these kids.

And I tell my teachers, I'll support you however I can.

I'll come and be in your classroom.

I'll give you a break if you need it, whatever I can do to keep kids in your classroom and keep them learning and make you feel good about teaching all of them.

TRACEY KARST: We receive a lot of training here as teachers on ACEs, and I soak up every single thing because I just feel like the more I learn the better off I am as a parent.

My husband and I have adopted four children from different parts of the world.

I was a teacher a long time before I was a mom.

And I always thought because I was a good teacher, I'd be a great mom.

But I stepped into something that was harder than I had ever experienced.

I can think of very few ACEs that one of my children don't fall into, drug exposure in their first homes, absent mother, my two oldest had never met their mother.

My nine-year-old was in ICU for four months.

He had been locked in a cage.

All of them are food neglected.

And we have so many issues at home.

We jumped into it, and we didn't know what we were doing, but we are open about our struggles because we have a lot of struggles daily.

And I think because we are so open about it, the community has embraced it more.

They've offered a lot of support.

People want to be helpful, and people want to be accepting, and people want to learn what you're going through.

We tell everybody we can the beauty of adoption.

One of our goals we feel in our life -- and we even instill that in our children -- is children need homes, children need mamas.

Our school has been an absolute rock because, truly, children of trauma you cannot raise them like typically developing children.

They have given me constant advice and support that I can't -- I don't think I would have gotten anywhere else.

They have bent over backwards for my nine-year-old son's needs to the point where they not only understand, but they embrace him, and they embrace who he is, and the differences are beautiful to them instead of a hindrance.

Here I feel like he's important and special, and they understand him.

Being a mom has also made me such a better teacher because I can see that just because a kiddo comes in my classroom and I don't know their story, doesn't mean they don't have a story.

They all have some story, some not as healthy as others.

And so I look at them all as how am I going to love you today.

KELLI KNOWLES: Tracy cares about every single kid.

And I feel so blessed to have her.

And it takes one person to change a kid's life, and Tracy has changed lives, and she gets to see that change.

I feel like every teacher here has that extra level of heart and compassion.

We are changing lives.

It might not be a big change, it might not be a visible change, but a kid knowing that an adult cares about them and loves them personally beyond them learning in a classroom is making a huge difference.

We're creating a relationship, and that's the most important thing that we can do.

And I tell people all the time, if you can create a relationship with kids, you can teach them anything.

KEITH ORCHARD: Other than the immediate family, kids spend more of their time at school than any other place.

The schools, I say, are the most important institution in the community.

How well the schools are doing is how well your children will be doing and how well the entire community will be doing.

HEATHER YARBROUGH: Here at Endeavor Elementary we've worked with Keith Orchard, and so with the training that Keith provided, we are thinking differently about what we offer students in the classroom.

He gave us some strategies, some tools.

We have zones of regulation in all of our classrooms.

We have zone checks for students to be able to go and just take a breath and calm down and get back into the classroom.

A lot of times in education we try to fight through that stuff and it's this little fight that happens between teacher and student.

And we're learning that we can't fight it, we have to embrace it, and we have to teach kids how to work through it.

No matter what part of the country you are in, these are tools and strategies and skills that you're learning just to be a healthy human being.

You don't have to come from horrible situations.

You don't have to have a trauma background to be able to benefit from self-regulation strategies.

We see horrific things.

We have experienced lots of gang violence.

We experience students who are suffering sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and just horrific situations.

We've lost students due to gang violence.

I can name students who when they walk in through our doors they know it's safe here.

They know they have adults who care for them and are going to work their hardest to help them be the best little humans that they can grow up to be.

What's hard is when they leave our doors.

Some students might have cried to you and said, please don't send me home, and they go home, and we have no control over that little one once they leave our doors.

The abuse that kids have, the domestic violence that they witness, we have no control over that.

It's not enough for us just to be here every single day.

We talk them through horrific situations and then continually teach them that the circumstances that they're currently going through don't have to define who they become and what they choose to do in life, which I think is one of the biggest lessons when it comes to resiliency.

It's a hard road, and it's not fair.

It's not fair that this is the life that some of our kids are coming to us with.

If we can get kids starting to believe in themselves at this age, they'll be unstoppable.

Here at Endeavor we have so many success stories on top of all of the horror stories that I could tell you.

We have so many more success stories.

I am so proud of the work that we've done here to break that cycle and to help students know that this really is a safe place.

You are respected!

ALL THE STUDENTS CHANTING: I am respected!

I am valued!

I am loved!

Go Rockets!

HEATHER YARBROUGH: So despite the experiences that they might come to us with, they are making it.

They are making different choices.

They are developing the skills, and they have the tools to not let their current circumstances define who they become.

Our job is not done as a society and as a community because they're still growing, and they're still developing.

And as they leave Endeavor Elementary and head on to middle school and high school and then secondary education after that, it's our job to make sure that they stay resilient and that they are supported and know that whatever it is that they might need, we are here to rally around them.

KEITH ORCHARD: We're asking our teachers and our school system to do a lot, to train up our students to be academically superior in all of the subjects, but also to teach them social and emotional skills, how to understand themselves, how to handle stress, how to partner and be in a relationship with other people.

We're asking our schools to do a lot.

And we know in order for them to be successful, we need the rest of the community to support us and partner with us and bring in their expertise and support our teachers to do all that.

HEATHER YARBROUGH: I would not choose to show up every single day if I didn't have hope.

This is, this is our life work, this is my life work.

I couldn't imagine doing anything else.

LUIS GRANADOS: As soon as I open those doors and I see those kids, you know, trickle in and flutter in behind me, and I see their smiles and their high-fives and their handshakes, and we sit there and laugh, oh, it's completely worth it, every minute of it.

I absolutely love it.

This is what I want to do.

I'm Executive Director of Breaking Chains Academy of Development.

Our target population is mainly those kids from those low-income families those broken homes, those single-parent homes or even those two-parent homes where the parents are just working nonstop just to maintain for the family.

My parents were working ten-hour days, twelve-hour days, they're not home.

So it wasn't necessarily that they weren't there for me.

What I was lacking was kind of that guidance, that supervision.

I think I needed that and that lacked for my life.

I looked around me and I saw, okay, if you're from a lower-income family, if you're Mexican, Mexican American, you're in a gang.

It's not are you in a gang, it's what gang are you in.

So I just grew up with that mentality.

I thought it was a mentality I had to keep in order to survive, especially where I was from and how I looked.

I just kind of started getting engulfed in that gang culture.

Around the age of 15 I got involved with OG's BAD, which is now Breaking Chains.

And even though I was kind of partaking in this gang lifestyle, I did have the support system.

And little did I know then, now I do, that every time I'd hit an obstacle, I'd always run back to my support system.

And I had that, you know, I'd come back and get that guidance and get that extra push through that obstacle.

I ended up getting incarcerated, was looking at doing 15 years in prison.

And I remember sitting in that cell, and I didn't feel like I was such a badass at that moment.

I remember looking out, out of my cell, and just thinking, wow, 15 years, I did it, I ruined my life.

This is it.

I was lucky enough to get a judge, Deborah Bail, who saw something in me.

She gave me a second chance and an opportunity to redeem myself.

And I think what she saw in me is what I see in these kids.

I can tell my story, and it sounds like a happy story, but it could have gone the other way.

And all it takes is one bad decision and you can be away for a long time.

I can just kind of reflect back when I was locked up.

It gives me anxiety knowing that this could have been my life for 15 years, no daughter, not a leader, not being able to help the at-risk youth that I am helping at the moment.

And so I'll definitely share the experience with them.

I think it's important for them to know what it looks like if they do decide to go down that road.

I was about 24 when I started working here.

I started mentoring kids.

Well, one day, they asked, well, do you think you can help us with the GED tutoring?

And I was, like, well, I was, you know, never too good at school or, you know, any academics so -- I'll give it a shot.

The first day I did it I absolutely fell in love with that part of the program, was the education services.

And, you know, eventually got the opportunity to take over as director.

We provide a GED/HSC curriculum.

We encourage them to get some kind of workforce training, and also we provide recreational activities.

We kind of use those recreational activities as a moment to kind of mentor them.

These aren't bad kids.

They're not behaving this way, necessarily, because they're programmed that way or they want to.

It's about reading the language of their behavior, looking at their ACEs, figuring out why they're acting the way they are and trying to figure out how can we help the way things are going.

We take ACEs, into consideration, every single day, those adverse childhood experiences.

We know that every student that we get here is a unique case, a parent in prison, drug addiction.

I've had multiple kids come in here and tell me that one of their parents was the first one that got them high off weed, meth, the first time they drank was with one of their parents, and, of course, the gangs.

It's heartbreaking.

So those are the kind of ACEs that I see.

And what that means is they're going to respond differently to the way they learn.

They're going to respond differently to authority.

And we get to learn who they are.

And then once we learn that, we can really start applying what we want, and they can start really taking it in.

Every kid we have here has a greatness inside of them.

I remember when Santana first walked in through those doors he was 14 years old, and he was the most mature one here.

And I remember just thinking to myself, that is special kid here.

SANTANA SIFUENTES: Growing up, especially around here, it was kind of hard cuz with my family it was kind of gangs, tattoos, you know, like fighting, prison, it was kind of like the, you know, the motto for my family.

So I feel like I was brought up to automatically go into a certain path.

And one of the things that I struggled with was kind of finding my place.

You know, when someone doesn't find their place, when they continue looking for their place, they kind of just end up somewhere, does that make sense, without them realizing it.

And I feel like I ended up in a pretty bad spot.

LUIS GRANADOS: With him it seems to be kind of a generation thing, and it kind of, you know, fell on him as well.

And so I can see that he carried that with him.

He'd come in, he was on probation, he would kind of fall off, get incarcerated, come back.

You know, those doors were always open for him.

I would always try to encourage him.

And then he ended up getting committed eventually, which ended up going to the juvenile prison.

And eventually he ended up getting his GED.

In the morning we do our education classes from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., where we offer that GED/HSC curriculum.

ZEKE CAMPOS: I got kicked out of school during my eighth-grade year.

So I was just looking for a better place to learn.

And I'm 14, and I'm learning stuff in high school.

It's, like, it's advanced stuff.

I like mathematics, you know.

It's my passion right there.

It's not as hard as everyone makes it seem.

You've just got to have the right place and the right environment to focus and to actually get work done.

LUIS GRANADOS: After that we kind of just turned into a place where these kids could come and hang out.

We have a bunch of on-site recreational activities.

We have our pool table, we have a computer lab, game console, and the most popular one is the recording studio.

We use that as one of our recruitment tools.

We get kids coming in asking about the recording studio.

Like, hey, we heard you have a recording studio here, can we use it?

Yeah go ahead.

They go in there, the next thing you know they're asking, what is this place?

What do you guys do here?

And then the next thing you know they're signing up for our GED classes.

ZEKE CAMPOS: I know that my life is wasting away, I'm just trying to make it out of the ghetto today, I'm just trying to get my bills...

This is the place for me.

Because I was coming to school with people who know what it's like to live a life like mine.

And the teacher, himself, he has been in my shoes as a younger kid, himself.

He has, like, he knows what it's like.

He understands me.

He does so much for us, and I was like, you know, I'm still young, I'm still doing a little bit of my wrongs, but that just shows even though I do a little bit of my wrongs, I could still, still make it somewhere in life.

ADRIAN HERNANDEZ: The way he teaches it, like the way he explains it, you know, he takes it step by step, you know, and he lets us move at our own pace, so it's like all in front of us, and that's what made me learn faster for math and science.

And that gives me hope because, like, I seen that he's came like at a place, like, where we are at right now, it gives me hope, thinking that I could do that too.

PATRICK TANNER: I'm extremely pleased to announce that CWI is awarding Luis Granados a full year's scholarship to the College of Western Idaho.

I'm really impressed about the work that you're doing, and how you're feeding that hope and inspiration.

LUIS GRANADOS: Well, I'm trying not to cry, honestly.

But I have big dreams for these guys.

I have big dreams for the school.

But I have dreams of also furthering my education so that I can do this type of work more effectively.

DEBBIE KLING: Breaking Chains is an organization that brings hope to young people that may not have hope.

And that's where Luis is making a difference in paying attention to every individual young person that's in this program.

LUIS GRANADOS: We're building community here.

There's a kinship here that I don't think you can find anywhere else; that's what makes us special.

They come in as just students, and no matter if it was just -- if they only were here for a week and left or if they were here for a month or years, they leave as family.

I try to be a role model to these kids and show that resilience and let them see, look, man, if I can do it, you can do it too.

You can do it too.

I look just like you, I talk just like you, I'm from where you're from, and if I can do it, you can do it too.

KIERAN DONAHUE: These kids whatever environment they're growing up in, whatever cultural aspect that is, they're going to be whatever they see.

If we can understand, fundamentally, that that's the starting point.

I'm in my eighth year as sheriff here in Canyon County, and I can tell you that people in our jail and jails throughout the state, there's ACEs in their history.

They made a decision to make an egregious error, and they're experiencing the worst time of their lives.

That doesn't mean they're hardened criminals, especially in jail.

It means that they made some bad mistakes, they've got to be held accountable for them, but we have an opportunity there.

We have an opportunity to go in there with the ACEs program and say, wait, how can we give you a different direction, because right now you're not a hardened criminal.

Right now you may not even go to prison, and we don't want you to go to prison.

BRYAN TAYLOR: They're already fighting an uphill battle.

Canyon County has one of the highest ACE scores of individuals that are in the juvenile detention facility.

My office is trying to be proactive.

In our juvenile detention facility here in Canyon County, those that are incarcerated in the actual detention facility, are getting the ACE scores.

They're going through the assessment test to help with those predictors and try to do early intervention so that we can eliminate them from coming into the adult system.

And also we're looking at trying to figure out a way when victims of crimes come in that we're working with, going through the ACE factors with that victim to provide them the necessary resources so they would not develop that criminal behavior later on down the road.

Intervention is critical, so I think we have to get in front of it, especially not just my office, but as a community as a whole, to start instilling the hope to our community that we can, hopefully, eliminate adverse childhood experiences so kids can just grow up and enjoy life without having to stress and deal with those aspects.

MARK INGRAM: I specialize in doing juvenile justice cases.

Once we became aware of the study and its implications, it was like seeing the world through a different lens.

And so all of the behaviors that I would see kids engaging in, and I would be asking myself, what is wrong with you, suddenly the lens became, what happened to you.

It affects the way you approach those cases.

So there is really no point in just assuming that the usual methodology of the criminal justice system are going to have any effect on that behavior because the behaviors are underlying, largely uncontrolled and uncontrollable without the significant intervention to address underlying trauma.

I have a dream that we will become a community that understands ACEs and understands its implications in terms of public policy and to take concrete policy-driven responses to those underlying causes.

KIERAN DONAHUE: They have had very disadvantageous situations happen in their life because they've had ACEs.

They're looking for something different.

There's something that's driving them toward the criminality, the drug world.

Drugs are the nexus of all crime.

Literally, 95 to 99 percent of all crimes that we deal with in our jurisdiction is illegal narcotic-based.

SAISHA MEYER: Both of my parents are drug and alcohol users.

Just growing up with ny parents using and being in and out of foster care, I turned to using, and I was going to jail.

Our addiction comes from some type of trauma that has happened.

When I was seven my mom was shot nine times and survived.

Shortly after my mom was shot, my dad ended up killing himself.

So I've had childhood trauma.

I know that people know about childhood trauma, but I feel like they don't know the full extent of where it can lead.

And everybody you talk to they have some type of trauma, whether it's childhood or as they got older.

They use as a coping mechanism instead of finding a healthier alternative.

KIERAN DONAHUE: In law enforcement domestic violence is up to 50 percent of all of our calls of service, throughout this nation.

When we hear a dispatch call out domestic violence, that's up to 50 percent of all the calls we take every day in the United States.

Let's put this in perspective, one in four women -- one in four -- and one in seven men will be victims of domestic violence in their lifetime.

Domestic violence is probably the most dangerous call we go on.

I can tell you, personally, that the hair stands up on the back of your neck.

I can tell you that my psyche changes, that my whole demeanor changes, that I know that I'm going to go into one of the most dangerous situations, and it's going to be very unpredictable.

Law enforcement they see all the children that have gone the wrong way, and it breaks their hearts.

They suppress a lot of it.

And I'm telling you they do, they keep a lot of it inside.

The cases I've seen, for so many years, all the search warrants, the common theme I saw was drugs, abuse, no hope, no hope whatsoever, arresting sons and their fathers and their mothers and their sisters for criminal activity.

We have to stop that.

That's why stopping domestic violence is so important.

It's why talking about it -- it's a taboo topic that we don't want to talk about, but we need to talk about it to save that next generation of children, because that shouldn't be happening to anyone.

BRYAN TAYLOR: We're still seeing a large amount of domestic violence cases that we need to start talking about it.

And breaking that barrier that it's okay to start addressing, is a huge hurdle that we overcome.

And you see a lot of these movements in the country, I think are very powerful movements that we're being more comfortable talking, that it shouldn't happen to me.

And we're the voice right now, the community is the voice, and it's our responsibility to protect.

KIERAN DONAHUE: This isn't acceptable in our society.

It's actually a crime.

But more importantly than it's a crime is what it does to the family unit, what it does to us from a social perspective.

My wife and I started the Man Up Crusade.

It's making awareness now using purple.

And purple is the color of solidarity against the issue of domestic violence.

So it's the color of choice of victims and survivors of domestic violence.

So the Man Up Crusade is a nonprofit foundation, and we're in 14 states now.

We started here in Idaho.

It's about bringing awareness to the issue of domestic violence and how that affects the next generation of children.

We partnered with professional rodeo, professional bull-riding, and we have purple night in rodeos throughout the country.

We're in solidarity about stopping domestic violence in our society.

The more we can encourage our young adults, our mentors, to be involved with the kids that absolutely idolize them, whoever thought we'd be signing autographs, right, for high school kids, but they do it.

These young men, our football players, our college athletes, they compete to be an ambassador for our program.

And so they get to go with us to events.

And you can't imagine the number of young people that come up to them.

And to watch them interact and take the time.

I love watching it.

So when you have those heroes to those children that are attending these events, those people making an influence on those kids, if they can just see that one person that says, that guy doesn't do that or that woman doesn't do that, we've made a difference in that child's life.

And I think we're starting to see the hope now, I really do.

I think that we're starting to see it because of the advocacy programs that are out there.

We, as a society, can't just leave it up to the cops, we can't just leave it up to the prosecutor, we can't just leave it up to the school counselor or the teacher, and we need to support those teachers and those programs.

We always go, if we can save one of these guys, one person, we have done our job.

And none of us believe we are only going to save one, right?

We have a goal to save the world, that's what we do.

JEAN MUTCHIE: Really mitigating adverse childhood experiences is going to take all of us working together.

We have judges, we have prosecuting attorneys, media partners.

And when we actually collaborate, the future for our kids could be really, really incredibly bright.

I feel hope that we have leaders coming to the table.

We have passionate groups of people who say, we refuse to give up on creating a better pathway and a better future for our kids.

We all need to lean in with all of the resources that we have to say that one child, we can really change the trajectory for them so that the next generation of kids become healthy adults who raise the next generation of healthy kids.

There's no better investment.

I promise you right now, there's no better investment than the investment we make now in our kids.

ANNOUNCER: For more information on adverse childhood experiences visit idahoptv.org/resilience where you will find additional information and a link to PBS Learning Media.

There you can find resources to help support children with ACEs in the classroom; and additional resources from the Idaho Resilience Project, an organization that works at all levels to engage people, organizations, leaders, and communities.

If you or someone you love need to talk to someone right away for confidential support, call the Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK, that's 1-800-273-8255 Funding for this program has been provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, through its Culture of Health Leaders, a national leadership program, that fosters collaboration between people of all fields and professions, that have an influence on people's health to build just and thriving communities.

Optum Idaho, working closely with our state to manage outpatient behavioral health benefits for Medicaid members and working to reduce stigma and promote mental well-being for all.

The Friends of Idaho Public Television; The Idaho Public Television Endowment; and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.