Sharon Halaghay

Sandra Vicars

Courtney Russell

Danielle Reeves

TEL 212

Project 2

Rationale

Under the childhood topic I chose to write about social class and poverty because this impacts children greatly. Children do not get to choose the social class they are born into, or whether they are born into a poverty stricken family. Children who are born into poverty or low income families deserve to have all the educational advantages as their counterparts who live in financially stable households. This is an important factor in children’s lives that teachers should be made aware of and learn how to approach and overcome. I also chose the children, ethnic awareness, and prejudice topic because I feel that this is yet another very important topic with children. It is important that we as teachers promote a safe learning environment for all children. By being aware of how children think and learn about different cultures we can structure our classroom accordingly. I also included the section on variables affecting attitudes and prejudice because this too is important to know how and what influences children’s way of thinking. We all met via phone and web conferencing to decide on a format that we were all comfortable with using. We agreed on a Facebook page because we were familiar with the formatting and it was something we all could access independently. We also felt that this was a format that others would be familiar with, therefore making it easy for them to navigate. We all took a main topic within the chapter and then claimed any smaller subtopics that we thought would be important to include. We worked on adding our information to the webpage throughout the week. Our biggest challenge that I think we had was initially formatting our information. Sandra was able to find an application that made our delivery a lot more organized and reader friendly.

(D. Reevees)

For project two I decided to choose the topic of age because I thought it would be the most interesting. I find it amazing to watch how other people treat one another just based on the small factor of age, whether they are nicer or demeaning to a younger or older person than themselves. Age is one of those topics to me that really shows who people are whether than who they claim to be. Age doesn’t define anyone; a person can be more mature than their age or more immature than most people their age. It’s all about the attitude that a person possess’ so I found this chapter to address more than just the attitude but the actions that come along with the attitudes. I chose to focus on the adolescent’s section because I find it the most relatable since I am around that age group.

The first section I focused on was “Relationship with Parents.” This section I feel is really important; I am very close with my parents and I think it has a lot to do with how they raised me. Having a good relationship with your parents is a very important quality to possess especially as you get older in life. I think when teaching about relationships between parents and adolescents it is important to address the issue of communication and attitude that can become the barrier in many relationships between teens and their parents. The main concept came from possessing the, “Ability to keep calm and allow for morals instilled into an adolescent to come through as they begin making their own choices.” I chose to leave out nothing from this section because it was so small and I felt like it was all important to convey the idea behind the strong morals that influence the good decisions that a teen makes. Some of the main points in this section include:

· Parents keeping a positive attitude towards their adolescents.

· Parents being confident that their teen is making the right choices.

· Strong morals instilled in teens will allow for good decision making to occur.

Resources included in “Relationship with Parents:”

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=708023n

http://www.natefacs.org/JFCSE/v18no2/v18no2Allison.pdf

http://www.jstor.org/pss/1130078

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2248/is_142_36/ai_79251803/

http://life.familyeducation.com/parenting/teen/42917.html

The second section I examined was substance abuse among adolescents. I really enjoyed this section because I found it amazing the lengths teens go to for an escape that could come from a healthier source such as a sport or hobby. I believe that abusing substances is such a destructive path to head down so it is really important to teach kids about finding another outlet. I found it interesting to see the different types of users and who will fade out of abusing drugs and those who will have a lifetime struggle with it. The main concept comes from “seeing the problems that occur from substance abuse and the types of users that arise from adolescents.” Some of the articles give statistics about abuse while others focus on prevention of abuse. The videos give a light on the problems with substance abuse among adolescents. The main concepts behind this section include:

· There are three types of abusers: experimenters, compulsive users, and recreational users.

· Experimenters are the main type of abusers among teens but compulsive users are the ones that use the most.

· Recreational users usually abuse with alcohol and marijuana but like the spontaneous relaxation and release they achieve.

Resources included in “Substance Abuse:”

http://life.familyeducation.com/teen/drugs-and-alcohol/39361.html

http://drugabuse.gov/pdf/prevention/redbook.pdf

http://www.5min.com/Video/Teenagers-and-Drug-Abuse-6232

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0aCuzxoKZo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmT96T3OIhI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC5VC2-yNcE&feature=related

The third section I examined was youth violence. This section was the one that I personally knew the least about but it is such a huge problem in the United States. The amount of adolescents that are engaging in the violent behavior creates a question of, “Where did they learn this behavior?” This can be seen in the media that portrays such an ideal side to violence. With girls going crazy over the “bad boy,” this in turn makes it more appealing to want to be the “bad boy” that girls will be more attracted to. The high amount of arrests from the adolescent community creates a worry for the future and what it holds. So this topic proves important to resisting the increase in teen arrests and crimes. The articles given show the statistics, real dangers of adolescent crime, and the risk factors involved in committing crimes. The video clips share stories of inmates and why they are behind bars. The main concept behind this section includes, “Examining the violence that occurs in students’ lives.” The key points concentrate on:

· Depression does not lead to crimes but antisocial and aggressive behavior do.

· Adolescents make up a huge part of arrests in the United States for their small part of the population.

· Most violence among teens does not occur around school areas or in schools but in another area.

Resources included in “Youth Violence:”

http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/youthviolence/chapter4/sec3.html

http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/fs000189.pdf

http://karisable.com/crssstat.htm

http://www.aetv.com/beyond-scared-straight/video/

I did not omit anything from the sections I examined I thought they all gave really good points that were important in prevention towards a better future. The section I chose not to study was “Street Gangs.” I felt like this section was not very important to the project. It gave more to the section of “Youth Violence” and did not contain the material I was interested in covering for this project. The main problem I had with this project was making lesson plans. I have never made them so I was a little lost when it came down to trying to put this into the form that teachers could teach from. I tried to give a little more of a summary of the sections and cover the key concepts that would be important in teaching a lesson in prevention mainly.

(C. Russell)

Child abuse andchildhood obesityaffect a child’s ability to effectively function in an educational environment. Many children become withdrawn and unwilling to communicate with classmates, teachers or administrators. Combating abuse and obesity is a societal obligation that teachers need to understand and embrace as they plan their lessons and goals for their students. Facebookis a great social media tool that provides ease of access to resources and materials. Facebook allows others to contribute by sharing links, videos, experiences and ideas. We met to discuss the content and distribution mode. Each team member was assigned sections within the text and prepared their ideas and interpretations of the readings. It was difficult to figure out how to bring the materials together from the text, but adding links, videos and sharing ideas is easy.

Resources – here are 2 resources I used in my sections:

Ogden, C. and Carroll, M. (2010). Prevalence of Obesity Among Children and Adolescents: United States, Trends 1963–1965 Through 2007–2008. Retrieved April 9, 2011 fromhttp://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity_child_07_08/obesity_child_07_08.htm

United States.Children’s Bureau. (2010). Child Maltreatment 2009 Retrieved April 7, 2011 fromhttp://www.childwelfare.gov/systemwide/statistics/can.cfm

(S. Vicars)

As a whole group, we decided on the 4 longest main topics under each age group: Social Class and Poverty, Child Abuse, Youth Violence and Young Adulthood. Furthermore, if we wished to include other topics, it was optional for each group member but not required. This is because we felt we wanted to direct our focus strongly on the core of this lesson, to stay focused. Other topics were equally important, but may not have been as in depth or relative to us. However, we still included as many sections as we could. As an individual, I decided on Young Adulthood, because I believe this is a very critical and underestimated age. It is the confusing point on which students are not children or teens, but not full grown adults and it comes with great responsibility. I also touched on adolescence topics, such as, high risk behavior, adolescent suicide and sexual behaviors. I also wanted to include these subjects because they are very controversial and sometimes unaddressed because it is a private matter and most importantly many educators may not feel comfortable or prepared enough to help their students with these behaviors, but it is crucial to realize that these sad, shocking and increasing behavior is in every classroom. Our facebook page is set up as an outline, personally I learn interactively, with not just words on a page – but real life relative matters to connect to the lesson as well. Sandra did help by formatting the actual lesson outlines in the “Notes” tab, where it is organized by age group – topic, we did this because facebook is the now and the modern interaction for all students of all ages. It’s all public and has an easy access, we can simply show our outside sources with easy links to youtube, blogs and other articles with just a click of a button. The most difficulty I think we had was organizing the text and information properly, until we figured out the Notes application, but we were all mostly on the same page, we did our reading, and we came prepared to set up our information in the best way possible.

My personal resources include:

http://threeminds.organic.com/2011/03/generation-z-educating-the-digital-natives.html

Davidson, M., & Range, L. (1999). Are teachers of children and young adolescents responsive to

suicide prevention training modules? yes.Death Studies, 23(1), 61-71. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

http://www.ianrpubs.unl.edu/epublic/live/g1715/build/g1715.pdf

http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2011/03/30/generation-z-will-revolutionize-education/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owwM6FpWWoQ

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7913530

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDAdaaupMno

(S. Halaghay)

Citation

Gollnick, D, & Chinn, P. (2009). Multicultural education in a pluralistic society.

Colombus, Ohio: Merrill.