Student-+Krystal

Teen Pregnancy
 * Research Assignment **

Teenage pregnancy is a problem that is only growing these days and is heading for the worse. I chose this topic because I went to an all girl catholic high school where pregnancy wasn’t really an issue until my senior year when we experienced our first and only pregnant student. Being pregnant at such a young age while still in school has a great effect on one’s education as well as the rest of their life.

Facts: 11% of all births in the United States are contributed to teens. 57% of teenage pregnancies result in birth. 29% of teenage pregnancies are terminated by abortion. 19% of white/ non –Hispanic teens will get pregnant this year. 51-53% of Latina and African Americans girls are “more likely than not” to get pregnant during their teen years. 70% of teens are sexually active by 19. Pregnant teenagers and teen mothers are more likely to live in poverty stricken areas for longer amounts of time then teens that do not get pregnant. Also, they are more likely to be less educated because their pregnancy will cause them to drop out of school. This is an epidemic in the United States. A teen in the U.S is twice as likely to get pregnant then a teen in England or Canada, and eight times more likely then a teen in Japan and the Netherlands. Pregnant teens lead to a less educated community since their rate of dropping out increases. If children aren’t born into the right environment it can hinder the child’s future. Abuse and neglect can occur and the child can end up in foster care. Also, teen pregnancy is an ongoing cycle. The child of a teen mom is more likely to be a teen mom as well.
 * The effect on the Culture of the Community ** :

Teen pregnancy can influence the school because some people may think it is their job to teach kids about the dangers of sex and how to prevent pregnancies. If there is a great deal of pregnancies going on in a particular school they may feel as though their sexual education programs aren’t working and need to update them. Schools also have to keep up with standards given to them by the state so they must keep them up and be flexible with the pregnant students. Pregnant students may be absent and missing class; they still must pass all their classes so the school has to offer them extra help in order to do so. Schools must offer the resources to teens that are at high risk for becoming pregnant, as well as every other student. Their main goal should be preventing first time pregnancies in teens from occurring. Also, providing ongoing sex education that is timely and realistic can reduce the amount of pregnant teens in the school. A teen may need counseling in this time if they were a victim of rape or sexual abuse or even if they just don’t know what to do with the baby and how to deal. It is helpful for the school to have counseling at all times for the students. Many pregnant teens fall behind due to their fatigue, sickness, or doctor’s visits. A teacher can help this by offering them extra help and making sure that they stay on top of their work. If a teen fall behinds there is a bigger chance that she will just drop out of school and never go back. This will hinder what they can do with the rest of their lives since they won’t even have an education to support them. Also, pregnancy may be a distraction to the other students in the class and an extra thing that they will all have to cope with. Peers will have to learn to be more accepting and helpful to their pregnant peers and realize what they are going through. Teachers of pregnant teens have to be well accommodating and understanding of what the students are going through. This is probably a tough time in the teen’s life so the teacher has to be supportive and helpful as much as they can.
 * Effect on the School Culture: **
 * Effect on the Classroom: **

Black, Susan. (2009). Children Having Children. American School Board Journal. May 2009, 40-41. Retrieved from Academic Search Premiere database.
 * Bibliography: **

GOOD WORK! 5/5 POINTS EARNED FOR CH ASSIGNMENTS!

11/3/09 chapter 8 Assignments
A family literacy program has many benefits for families who speak English as a second language. In this program, parents visit the school regularly to participate in activities of their children's choosing. As you watch this video clip, note the ways you can involve parents who speak English as a second language. A family literacy program is a way to get the parents involved in the child’s education. They do many activities together such as computers, board games, sports, outside activities, reading, and math. The goal of this is to get parents involved in their child’s education and also so that they can learn as well. A parent who speaks English as a second language can benefit from this because it allows them to know what their child is learning in school so that they can reinforce it at home or even possibly learn from it as well.
 * Chapter 8 Activity #1 **

Name three positive outcomes that occur when parents are involved in their child’s education. 1. The parents can reinforce what is being learned in the classroom at home. 2. Allows the parents and children interact with one another in a learning environment so they both can further their education. 3. Gets the parent involved in the child’s life, this can lead to a happier child who can result in a better home life as well as a better school life.

Why is it sometimes difficult to get parents who speak English as a second language, or not at all, to become involved in school activities. Parents who have a hard time with speaking English or who can not speak English at all may not feel comfortable being involved in the school activities. The language barrier could cause many problems and the non English speaker could just give up on trying. If they can not speak English it can be hard for them to help their child with homework or school activities since they themselves can not understand what is supposed to be done.

In this video clip, a teacher discusses how she communicates with parents, and why she feels it is important to involve them in the education process. As you watch a parent help with a lesson in vocabulary think about the role parents have as volunteers in the classroom. Reflect upon how having parents volunteer in the classroom benefits the teacher, students, and parent. Parents in the classroom can be a great aid to the teacher in the room. They can help the teacher in activities in the room so that the teacher is not overwhelmed with all the things that most be done. The students can get more direction since there are 2 people that can help them, not just the teacher. Also the parent will feel good about volunteering and their ability to help and make a difference in the classroom. Also they might enjoy seeing their own child in the room and see how well he is doing.
 * Activity #2 **

How does this teacher involve parents in the educational process? The teacher has one parent as a monitor and then has other parents sign up for days that they would like to come in and volunteer. The parents are allowed to pick whatever they would like to help with and basically just walk around the room and help the students. They can direct the students and help them when needed.

How do the students, the teacher, and the parent each benefit from this kind of classroom The students benefit from this type of classroom because they have someone extra to help them and guide them as to what to do in the classroom. The student may also love to have their parent in their classroom so they will be on their best behavior and be more in tuned with what is going on in the class. The teacher benefits because she has extra help and could possibly get some of her work done with the parent being in the classroom. The parent gets more involved in their child’s learning and that way they can reinforce it at home and know what is going on in their child’s life.

Chapter 7 YOU ARE DOING A GREAT JOB! 5/5 POINTS EARNED
11-02-09

Vygotsky’s term that he used to explain dealing with various emotions to make daily living easier is the zone of proximal development. He explained that this is what a child can do with some guidance of a more experienced peer; this is more than they would be able to do just by themselves. This is a technique that they learn from others. Just like how in the video they asked what others could do to help the students when they were feeling different feelings. The other people can help the student deal with different emotions in ways that he/she had not been able to do on their own. 2. While anger is seen as a problem for these and other adolescents, it does serve a purpose. How would you explain the benefits of conflict to these two students? I would say that anger is a good thing for students to deal with because it will teach them how to take control and how to deal with different situations that they will definitely be put in. Also anger can make things better for friends by letting the 2 get everything out in the open that has been eating away at them inside. Dealing with anger will help them deal with conflicts and find the best way to deal with situations that aren’t necessarily good. Even though this isn’t really the best type of interaction between children it is necessary for them to deal with. And dealing with it with others helps them to get through it in ways that maybe they did not think were possible.
 * 1)  Both students in this episode understand some of the strategies people employ for dealing with various emotions. What term did Vygotsky use to explain these strategies which make daily living easier?

3. How do student’s emotions impact their learning? A student’s emotions greatly impact their learning. If a student is not in the best frame of mind due to a fight, or lack of sleep, or something else then they will not be in the right frame of mind to learn. A child is more likely to worry if their friend is made at them or if they got grounded by their parents more than the actual lesson being taught. In order for a student to learn to their fullest potential they must be in the right frame of mind and willing to pay full attention to the lesson.

=Krystal, very good job. I really enjoyed reading your insights which demonstrate your knowledge of the materials. You have earned all points for each activity (5/5 for each).=

10-18-09 Homework Chapter 6 Activity #4 Think about your reasons for choosing teaching as a career. How do your reasons for teaching relate to your overall philosophy of education?

The reason I chose to become a teacher is because I want to teach students that learning is fun and not something you should be forced to do. I want to make a difference in the students’ lives and make them want to further their education and become more educated people. I wasn’t always positive that I wanted to be a teacher; I was a criminal justice major at first. However, after a year and a half I realized that it wasn’t for me and that I wanted to teach and help children with their education. I want to focus in the area of math though because this is what I enjoy doing and would love to teach students that math is fun a useful since most young children don’t think it is. I like teaching and being able to measure a student’s progress so that they, as well as me, know how much they have learned and improved. I was always a factual person, not very into the creative things, so this is the type of teacher I would be. I would try to make the work fun because I would want the students to enjoy the lessons that I am teaching them. I want students to be given every chance and opportunity available to them no matter what. My main goal is to help every single student succeed and find what they are truly good at.

10-13-09 5/5 POINTS EARNED FOR THE CH ASSIGNMENTS Chapter 6 Activity #1 The type of classroom that I would feel most comfortable in is the realism school of philosophy. I like things that are concrete and right there in front of your face. This school of philosophy is all about taking problems and being able to solve them through various ways. I am a fan of testing students to figure out if the comprehend what was taught to them or not. Also, I believe that critical thinking is a big part of schooling since that teaches you how to apply things learned in the classroom to real life events that will occur some day. I believe that the scientific method is a great way to teach students how to solve problems. It lets them guess what they think will happen, produce a way to approach the task, then follow through with it to see if they were right or wrong. I like that realism is all about perception and understanding. As a person I believe that you must see something to believe it and for it to be true. I think that this is just how realists see things as well. Again, I was always an advocate for testing to make sure that I comprehended the information and was able to recall it at the time needed.
 * Consider: logic, metaphysics, epistemology, and axiology. What type of classroom will you be most comfortable in? **

** a.Summarize Joyce Madsen's philosophy of education in one sentence. ** Joyce Madsen’s philosophy of education is that children should work at their own developmental pace since they all have their own individual needs to adhere to. ** b. Summarize Leonia Townsend's philosophy of education in one sentence. **    Leonia Townsend’s philosophy of education is for students to become life long learns, she wants them to be independent thinkers so that they are prepared for life when they leave school. Lynda Hootman’s philosophy of education is a student directed classroom where students let her know what they want to learn about, the classroom needs to be a free risk environment where the teacher guides the students so they can learn communication and be able to find information on their own**. d. Summarize Trent Eaton's philosophy of education in one sentence. **   Trent Eaton’s philosophy of education is students need to be guided on an individual basis and need to be taught on an individual level where he devotes time to the individuals instead of teaching and lecturing them as a whole.
 * Chapter 6 ACTIVITY #2 **
 * Developing a Philosophy of Education **
 * c. Lynda Hootman's philosophy of education in one sentence.**

10-12-09 Good Job! =__10/10 points for each!__=

Chpt. 5 Activity #4

I believe that having a themed school is a great idea, especially if the theme is proper and sends a good message to not just the students attending the school but also to the people in the community that surrounds the school. The Parkway School did a great job of this. Just by changing the school atmosphere it improved the students in many ways, such as in their attendance as well as their grades. By making school a safe place to come, in a city filled with crime an violence, students were more likely to come and feel wanted there. The school focused not only on academics but also on the morality and character of the students who went there. They aimed to make the students well rounded people and ready for the world out side of school. The school noticed the change in the students and I think the biggest accomplishment that was made in the school was that with this program the school’s graduation rate increased to 100%. This model of school is a great one to model. The people who attend these schools will be well prepared for the real world and be well versed in the diversity that they will be faced with outside of school. Also, it will get the students involved and want to work with their communities to make a difference. We can see this when they said that each student has to complete 60 hours of community service throughout their 4 years there. This shows them what a difference they can make in the world as well as gives them the opportunity to work with other people and form relationships. Every student should have the chance to attend a school with this theme and the activities that go along with it to make them better people.


 * __10-09-09 Chapter 5 activity 2__**


 * I believe that students should know as much as possible about the world. And that means more than just that of the United States, this means the whole world. The geography of the whole world is important. This is something that I was never taught in school. I was taught the basics of what the state capitals and where they were located on the United States map. So students should be able to locate other countries and also be able to speak intelligently about them. There is not a need to go into great detail about each and every country but it would be nice to know some of the basics about each place, such as what they are known for and the people’s ways of life. I don’t think that world cultures or anything of the sort was offered to me until college. I think that we should inform the students at a younger age that way they can relate to different people of different cultures then them better. **
 * I think that schools need to offer more world cultures classes and not just focus on the perspective of the United States. They should teach history and geography of the world not just what is familiar to us. We need to offer more programs that will enhance a student’s knowledge of the world. We could also offer more language courses that way students will be able to communicate with people from foreign countries. If schools would just offer more classes in this field to younger students instead of making them wait until college the world would be a better place with more intelligent people in it. **

__10/6/09 Chapter 5 Assignment #__

10-06 Chapter 5 Activity #1

If I had a chance to visit any country’s school system I would have to visit Japan. They are so high tech and have such up to date things that I feel as though it would be like going to school in the future. I feel like a lot of the world’s smartest people come from here so I would like to see what they are doing differently in their classrooms then we are in the United States. Also I think that they focus a little more on the math part of school rather than on the literature and such. This would make me very happy. So I would want to learn how they teach math and science at such high levels. Maybe seeing this would give some insight on the great technologies that they produce. I would also like to see how the students cope with going to school almost year round. This is definitely not something that we are accustomed to in the U.S. I would just like to learn the different ways teachers in Japan teach math lessons and get the students involved.

__**10/5/09 Thank you Krystal for your review. You picked out the salient points of the article and I am going to recommend that your classmates review your fine work. You are right, the purpose of this article is to recognize the fact that racism exists in classrooms and we as teachers and researchers need to address the fundamental reasons behind in it. - Dr. Williams**__

=__10/10 points__=

10-05-09

// “Allowing” Race in the Classroom // The article that I choose to read was that by Julie A. Helling. This article was all about how racism still exists in schools today even though we like to think that it was negated years ago. Students of color still experience racism in every part of their schooling and that is why they struggle to keep up with the standards that schools and people put upon them. We all will have to deal with race and racism at one point or another in our lives so we must admit that it does exist and learn to deal with the ups and downs of it. This article discussed how people of color have to deal with many more hardships then a white person would have to deal with. This can hinder their education process and lead them to go off to do their own thing instead of finishing school and what not. It then went on to discuss how teachers wanted to deal with this issue and most just wanted to ignore it and not deal. This is a bad idea though; we must be aware of everyone’s race and make sure we are sensitive to everyone. This teacher, who is also the author of the article, realized that race is important and that we must embrace it and not single out any one person or group. She says that African Americans do not have the best model for schooling because they are often taught by white teachers who can not really relate to their hardships or struggles. Students of all different races have many different experiences from one another; this article gave a lot of examples of that. Like students of color being told they won’t amount to anything or win certain things just because they aren’t white. This just degrades people of color and I can not believe anyone would do that. The author, even though she states she is white, tends to agree with the unfairness and ill treatment of people who are not white in the schooling system. The whole idea of the article was to inform us that race is still a serious issue. We can not just sweep it under the rug and hope that it will go away, because it won’t. It is a topic that we must openly discuss and hear other people’s experiences that way we can all learn and grow. We can’t pretend that race doesn’t exist because that would be denying all people of their ancestry and where they came from. We can not deny race just because talking about it makes us all nervous, we must embrace the differences and learn from one another.

You did a very good job Krystal! Your answers offer a great deal of information and reflect your understanding of the legislation. Well done! - Dr. Williams

9-29-09

Plessy vs. Ferguson – stated that even though schools were separate and segregated it was fine as long as they were equal and offered the same opportunities to both sets of school students.
 * 1) ** What was the result of Plessy vs. Ferguson? What was the result of Brown vs. Board of Education? **

Brown vs. Board of Education – Stated that the separate school were definitely not equal. The two schools did not offer the same opportunities, the African American schools were worse off then the schools for the white students. This case ordered that the schools be desegregated and that all students be able to attend the same schools and have the same opportunities.

2. **How did the result of Plessy vs. Ferguson and Brown vs. Board of Education shape today’s educational policies?** In today’s education everyone is entitled to be in the same classroom. We can not turn someone down based on their race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or anything else for that matter. This is why we have inclusion in the classroom today. No one can be turned away from an education. We can not discriminate against any kind of person; all have the same right to be educated with everyone else. 3. **Explain the following terms and practices, and describe how they impacted education in the 1950s and beyond:** School used to be segregated based on race. There was a school for white students and one for African American students. Both were said to be of equal conditions but this was untrue. After the Brown vs. Board of Education case it was made illegal that we segregate schools or anything else for that matter. This is when all schools now had to include all minority groups such as the African American race and anyone with disabilities and what not. So now everyone is entitled to equal education and is allowed to be in the same facilities with one another.
 * __ Segregation __ – isolation of a group of people based on one characteristic, i.e. race, gender, ethnicity, etc.


 * __ Separate-but-equal __ – This is when the government said that it was fine to segregate students as long as the schools were equal and had the same facilities. In that they had the same quality to the schools. This was untrue though. The schools for African Americans were often not up to the same standards as the schools for white students. This is what brought about desegregation in schools so that everyone was learning together and had equal facilities.
 * __ Busing and integration – __ busing was used to integrate the schools after the Brown vs. Board of education case. There were no longer allowed to be buses just for white people, or just for African Americans, and also there was not allowed to be a bus just for handicapped people. All buses had to be made accessible for all people, even the handicap, that way everyone could ride the same bus together and not just have one set of people on a certain bus. This also exposes all students and people to different types of people and improves their cultural awareness of all the different types of people who they will be exposed to in the world.
 * __ Resegregation – __ after it was said that schools had to be desegregated people used resegregation to get around this new fact and law. They used things like location, saying that they didn’t want their students being bused in from far away. So the schools got students from the neighborhood close to it, which was primarily all of one race. Also, the employers start to hire people based on their skills, not based on their race or gender. This is basically when a school that was once desegregated and had all types of students attending it becomes segregated yet again due to the people who choose to go there.
 * __ De facto segregation - __ segregation, usually in schools, that happens even thought it is not necessarily required by law to do so. For example, often the concentration of African-Americans in certain neighborhoods produces neighborhood schools that are predominantly black, or segregated in fact (de facto), although not by law (de jure).