Blogging on the Powwow

Yes, Plogging on the Bowwow. ( Thanks, Matt, for the great title suggestion.)  What a few weeks it has been! The title of this post says it all. I really cannot complain though. Many of my friends, students, co-workers, and fellow Bay Staters have experienced significant loss and trauma in recent weeks. I've just been working my fanny off - something that is expected by those of us in academia, especially at this time of year. I have just plowed through three very busy weeks of teaching, grading, and a multitude of campus-related responsibilities. Here are my last few weeks in pictures.     My desk on campus...reading articles for class and prepping questions for my students. The topic in this child welfare class was "The Long Arm of Child Maltreatment." After all my worry about what I would do in class, all was well.  I've had to stay over at a hotel near campus a few times recently. Here I am prepping for my Tuesday class at the hotel...around 11:00pm on a

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, so I might as well just write this post and get it over with. One of my main areas of specialization as an academic/researcher is children who die from maltreatment. I've been thinking that I should write a post about this topic for a while, awful as it is. I spend a lot of my time thinking, reading, writing about, researching, teaching, and presenting on fatal child maltreatment. I know it's not an easy topic. I'm with you. Even I need to take breaks from it from time to time. I hope that you can endure this post. There is so much that both the public and professionals need to know about this issue. I'll just give my readers some basic information and refer you to resources, if my readers are inclined to learn more.  Official statistics tell us that about 2,000 children a year die from maltreatment, but we also understand that this number is under-counted. Despite what is covered in the media, most children die from